The Chronicles of Fone Bone Oathbreaker
by D. G. D. Davidson
Summary: Being an alternate world sequel depicting the Second Bonewar, the rise of the new Locust, and the fall of the House of Harvestar.
1. The Dragon Stair and After

The Chronicles of Fone Bone Oathbreaker

D. G. D. Davidson

**SPOILER ALERT:** This is a "sequel" to BONE by Jeff Smith, or might be if BONE had ended a little differently. It assumes reader knowledge of all of BONE through Book 9, Crown of Horns.

**CREDITS:** For elements of the BONE universe, I referred to the One Volume Edition of BONE, © 2005 by Jeff Smith, as well as the black-and-white nine-volume series, which has different dialogue in some scenes. Both editions of the series are from Cartoon Books. For some visual descriptions, I referred to the four colorized volumes (Out from Boneville, The Great Cow Race, Eyes of the Storm, and The Dragonslayer) available at the time of writing from Scholastic's Graphix Imprint with full color by Steve Hamaker. I borrowed some place names and the names of some creatures and objects from Stupid, Stupid Rat-tails: The Adventures of Big Johnson Bone, Frontier Hero, written by Tom Sniegoski and illustrated by Jeff Smith (with an additional story written by Tom Sniegoski and illustrated by Stan Sakai), available from Cartoon Books. I borrowed one name from, and occasionally made vague allusions to, Rose, written by Jeff Smith, illustrated by Charles Vess, lettered by Steve Hamaker, and available from Cartoon Books. I do not consider my uses of these latter two works to be spoilers, but read at your own risk. The name Floyd Bone and his occupation as barber came from a previous version of the official BONE website. I have taken the liberty of naming a few unnamed characters in BONE to ease the narrative flow.

I have quoted several works. Some are credited. Those that are not are public domain and include the Authorized King James Version of the Bible, John Dryden's translation of Virgil's Ænid, Alexander Pope's translation of Homer's Iliad, William Shakespeare's As You Like It, and Edmund Spencer's Faerie Queene.

--D. G. D.

**Chapter 1: The Dragon's Stair and After**

_Alas, that Passion should profane,_

_Ev'n then, that morning of the earth!_

_That, sadder still, the fatal stain_

_Should fall on hearts of heavenly byrth--_

_And oh, that stain so dark should fall_

_From Woman's love, most sad of all!_

--Thomas Moore, "The Loves of the Angels"

An infinite number of worlds swim around each other like froth in a swirled glass. Some worlds are so dissimilar that their differences are obvious, but some are so similar they could never be told apart. Some worlds their inhabitants call the best of all possible worlds.

There are many of those.

This is not one of them.

The story of this world begins where the story of another ended. It begins with a hay cart rolling into the hot dust of a wide desert.

There were figures in the cart. One was a large, muscled creature, the soft violet tint of his fur offsetting the burning red of his eyes and the fierce sharpness of his razor-like claws. The other two figures were pale white, their slick skin exuding sweat. Smiley Bone, as was his wont, thought only of dreams and shadows and bright colors as he lolled his tongue, tasting the sharp sting of the meandering, wind-borne sands. Phoney Bone, always calculating even when he wished he weren't, was considering the long journey before them. They had food aplenty--bland, hard food--but water might be a problem. The rat creature could drink half his weight in a day, as could the cows. Phoney figured they would need to slaughter the cows within a week and strike out on foot. The rat creature could feed off the raw meat and the bones might be able to cook some of it to relieve the monotony of endless bread-thingies. Smiley, Phoney knew, would not be pleased, but Phoney was not interested in pacifying his innocent and emotional cousin.

Phoney was interested in survival.

Phoney sighed. He had been sighing since they first set out on the return journey to Boneville. He had barely had the strength to help keep the cart upright as they forded the river. He had shot accusatory glances at Fone Bone, but Fone had looked away and found reason to be near Thorn and gaze at her pleasant features rather than at the disappointed countenances of his cousins.

Phoney cursed under his breath. His anger toward Fone Bone moved aside, replaced by another consideration of his cold logic: they were in the middle of the desert and had forgotten shelter and sun hats, and pale bone skin was prone to burning. Phoney hadn't thought of that before. Before, all he'd thought about was getting away with Atheia's treasure, but the treasure, too, was gone, replaced by crate after crate of hard, stale rations. In his mind, Phoney could see Fone Bone nestled against Thorn as he rode back to Atheia in victory, the city's treasure in tow. Right that moment, Phoney envied Fone Bone, though he never had before, because Fone Bone was rich and Phoney had only twenty gold pieces.

Fone Bone, who never had more than a few dollars in his life.

Fone Bone, who wasted every precious penny on his stupid books.

Fone Bone, who mooched off Phoney just like Smiley did, but pretended he was so much more respectable than either Phoney or Smiley.

Fone Bone, that bastard.

That thought brought a twinge of guilt. Fone Bone actually was a bastard, though Phoney didn't think he knew. None of the cousins knew much about their parents, who had died, along with a hundred and fifty other bones, in the tragic Custard Pie Incident. Only Phoney was old enough to remember, and only he had spent the painstaking hours researching in the courthouse to learn all he could about their family. As he sat in the stuffy records office in the middle of summer with the sweat trickling from his forehead, he resolved to become wealthy and build an orphanage so other children wouldn't have to suffer as he and his cousins did.

Fone Bone, always the self-righteous one, complained when Phoney finally did build an orphanage on that hazardous waste site. Fone Bone both protested the construction and helped Phoney escape alive when Fone's own campaign led to a lynch mob. Phoney never entirely forgave him for that.

Phoney looked out ahead. The desert stretched to the shimmering horizon. It was going to be a long trip.

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As the cart faded into the sands across Deren Gard on its long journey to Boneville, Fone Bone stood on the rock beside Thorn and waved, and waved, and waved. Even after the shine of Bartleby's eyes had long since disappeared, he still stood and gazed after his cousins. Though he knew this moment would be sad, he never expected to feel exactly what he did feel.

As his cousins and their rat creature friend disappeared, Fone Bone felt something in his heart shrink, then shrivel, and then break. He felt, more certainly than he ever had before, that he did not belong in the Valley.

But when he looked up at the woman standing next to him, that feeling was easy to suppress.

Thorn, too, was still waving. As she was not looking at him, Fone Bone stole a moment to admire her. Gone was the cute, pert, slightly chubby girl he first fell for at the Hot Springs. This Thorn was lean, even skinny, and well muscled with a body wrought by hardship and battle. She bore many small scars across her limbs from the beating she and Bone had both endured, and as she smiled into the distance, her crystal tooth glinted palely, but Fone Bone found her lovelier than he had when they first met. Even the scars fascinated him; after all, bone skin doesn't scar.

She looked down at him and grinned. Before, Bone might have looked away and blushed, but now these two were used to gazing at one another.

"I'm glad you stayed, Fone Bone," Thorn said.

"So am I," Bone whispered.

She took his hand and turned. Gran'ma Ben was waiting for them. Ted and the Dragon, in a hurry to return to Atheia, had already left. Together with Gran'ma, Thorn and Bone walked back through the pass toward the Valley where the trees and flowers were now budding. Fone Bone's heart thumped. It was spring.

Bone felt a twinge in his stomach urging him to get one last glimpse of the Dragon's Stair and the desert where his cousins had gone.

He resisted it.

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The long ride to Atheia gave Fone Bone time to think. He and Thorn, oddly enough, had little to talk about on the trip. His mind drifted back to the last three months when he and Thorn and Phoney and Smiley and Gran'ma all wintered at the farmhouse. That was a time of music, of laughter, and of fun, when the rat creatures and Atheia and the return trip to Boneville all seemed so distant, and Fone Bone didn't have to think about who he loved more--that was how Phoney put it--his cousins, or "his girl."

He decided, in the end, that it was his girl.

Even though she had never exactly acknowledged herself as his girl.

He thought back to that one peculiar night when everything was not laughter and fun. Thorn was in bed and seemed to be moping. Fone Bone stuck his head in the door and asked, "Okay if I intrude?"

"Come in, Bone," she answered. "I was hoping to talk to you." Her soft voice tickled Fone Bone's auditory membranes. He slipped in the door, leaving it open a crack for decency's sake, and a warm lump settled in his middle. Was it time, then? Was she, at last, going to tell him how she felt?

It was cold in the room and Bone's breath blew like a ghost through the sharp air. He sat on the edge of her bed, careful not to touch her, but she reached out from under the blanket and laid a hand on top of his. Her fingers were chilled, and as always, he was surprised at how rough her hands were. Human skin, even Thorn's, was coarse compared to a bone's. Calluses from years of farm work had formed on her palms, at the bases of her fingers, and in the spaces between each knuckle. Although Fone Bone had worked that same farm, calluses never did, and never could, form. He had needed gloves to prevent the inevitable blisters, so Miz 'Possum had generously made them with four fingers on each hand.

"I've wanted to talk to you, Fone Bone," Thorn mumbled. Her voice sounded almost plaintive.

"Okay," Bone said.

"I'm scared," Thorn whispered. She shifted and her blanket rustled. "I've lived on a farm my whole life, Fone Bone." She shifted again and her grip on Bone's hand tightened. "I don't know how to be a queen. It seemed so nice at the ceremony, like a little fairy tale ending. But it's not ended, is it?"

"You'll do okay," Bone said, returning her squeeze. "I mean, you're the Veni-yan-cari. My fairy princess." He smiled in the dark. It had become a joke between them.

"Fairy queen," she corrected.

"Ooh, Faerie Queene," he mused. "I should have brought that along with Moby Dick." That thought gave him a sudden pang of longing for Boneville.

Thorn sighed, but then chuckled. "I don't think I even want to know. But still...I'm afraid."

"It's okay," he said.

"Are you sure? I'll make so many stupid mistakes."

"It's okay," he said again. "The people will respect you. And th' Dragon'll help."

"Will you?" she asked.

"Will I what?"

"Will you help?"

A shadowy silence lay across the bed. Bone sat there holding her hand until his own fingers were cold. "Of course," he said at last.

Her hand loosened and slipped back under the blanket. "Will you...sit there...until I fall asleep?" she asked.

"Yes," he whispered. He breathed out, releasing a white cloud that faded in the air.

Thorn quieted, and all Bone could hear were his own heart and the steady, soft gasp of Thorn's breathing. In time, her breath grew even and low. He considered turning to look at her as she slumbered, and that thought opened a hungry hollow in his middle. He didn't look at her. Instead, as silently as he could, Fone Bone slipped from the room, shut the door, and crept downstairs to warm his chilled fingers and footpads by the fire.

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On the road to Atheia, Fone Bone looked at Thorn again. The last time they traveled this road, they kept a blanket across their laps to keep warm, but spring was bright and sunny and now there was no need. When they rounded Flint Ridge, Gran'ma halted the cows and gazed from the cart across the plain to the great city on the edge of the cliff.

"We're home," Gran'ma said.

**Next: Back to Boneville**


	2. Back to Boneville

The Chronicles of Fone Bone Oathbreaker

D. G. D. Davidson

BONE is © 2006 by Jeff Smith.

**Chapter 2: Back to Boneville**

_It is the Late city that first defies the land, contradicts Nature in the lines of its silhouette, __denies__ all Nature. It wants to be something different from and higher than Nature... And then begins the gigantic megalopolis, the __city-as-world__, which suffers nothing beside itself and sets about __annihilating__ the country picture._

**--**Oswald Spengler**, **_The Decline of the West_

"Well," Fone Bone said, "here we are."

And there they were--the holy city of Atheia. It was a little worse for wear than when they last arrived: the burned outer town lay on the ground as cold ash, and the walls, though they had survived the siege, were in disrepair. Inside the walls, the city still stank and ran with rats and fever.

A large crowd greeted them as soon as they entered the gate. News of the young queen's return had spread through the city when the Great Red Dragon arrived, and Atheia had hastily prepared: Veni-yan soldiers--their hoods conspicuously free of eye symbols--lined the Queen's Road while peasants filled rooftops and gazed from windows. Fone Bone noticed that the faces were drawn, haggard, and a lot less enthusiastic than they had been the last time they viewed the queen.

They met a ragtag delegation consisting of the old Headmaster, the Pawanian teacher who still gave Fone Bone the creeps, Mermie the tea lady, and the Great Red Dragon, who nearly filled the street with his bulk.

The Headmaster scowled over his enormous, hairy nose. "Your Highness," he addressed Thorn, "and Queen Mother," he said to Gran'ma. He looked at Bone, almost with surprise, and his scowl deepened. "And..."

"Prime Minister Bone," Thorn suggested.

Bone swallowed.

The Headmaster sucked in his breath, but then bowed deeply and placed two fingers against his forehead in salute. "Prime Minister Bone, of course," he said.

The Veni-yan took control of the cart as Thorn, Gran'ma, and Bone dismounted. Gran'ma whispered in the Headmaster's ear. The Headmaster nodded and motioned to the Dragon, who stubbed out his cigaret and lumbered toward the stables after the Veni-yan warriors.

The small delegation surrounded the queen and her companions and herded them toward Lord Tarsil's tower, now the temporary headquarters of the city's administration. Once behind the locked door, they spoke.

"Report, Cedric," Gran'ma said to the Pawan cook.

Cedric looked startled and turned to Thorn.

Thorn glanced at Gran'ma, but said to the cook. "Yes, report."

"Your name is Cedric?" Bone asked.

"Your Highness," Cedric said, bowing, "the situation in the city and the surrounding territories is...dire."

Thorn rubbed her chin. "What do you mean?"

Cedric walked to a small table and unrolled a map of the Valley. "The Locust and the war, Your Highness, followed by an unusually harsh winter. The damage from the ash plume, the damage from Mim's rampage across the valley, and the war that depleted the city's supplies, not to mention the stifling of trade with Pawa, all lead to a terrible food shortage."

The Headmaster cleared his phlegmy throat. "On top of that, Your Highness, the missing treasure left us unable to pay the soldiers. Most of the mercenaries abandoned us, though a few agreed to work on credit. Many of the Veni-yan remained out of loyalty, but most of the Vedu revolted when they found their soft living was no longer sustainable under our emergency conditions."

Thorn sucked in her lips as she thought.

Mermie added in her squeaky voice, "And, Your Highness, our relationship with Pawa, though restored, is not exactly friendly. Upper Pawa is the Valley's breadbasket, and it lay in the direct path of the ash. Though ghost circles preserved patches, much of the land was nonetheless devastated. Fall harvest was underway when the ghost circles struck and many crops were lost."

"When winter began, the Pawans had barely enough grain left over to trade with us," the Headmaster grunted. "The people grew restless and many wondered about your prolonged absence."

"The snows stopped us," Thorn argued.

"We realize that, Your Highness," the Headmaster replied, "but mobs, you know, are not always reasonable. We believed that with the Dragon we would have everything under control without you. We were wrong."

"And we thought the winter would be mild," Cedric apologized.

"There were a few upsets," muttered the Headmaster. "I'm afraid we had to impose martial law."

Gran'ma cracked her knuckles. Thorn rubbed her head and gave Bone a worried glance. He returned it with a frightened face full of clenched teeth.

"Your Highness," Mermie advised, "the people want to know that you are in power and that you will reign with a firm, wise hand. May I suggest you hold court? Set up your pavilion, make public proclamations, and allow the people to bring you their grievances for judgment."

"It would help your popularity if at this court you lifted the martial law," the Headmaster said. "Since the queen mother has informed me that the treasure is found and safely returned, and since spring is upon us, a few of our problems should end."

"With the treasure back," Gran'ma ordered rather than suggested, "rebuild the palace. You won't always be able to operate your court out of Tarsil's tower and a temporary canopy."

Thorn continued to bite her lip. "Fone Bone, what do you think?" she asked.

Bone felt his forehead go damp. "I, uh...sounds good to me."

Thorn nodded. "Get some paper and ink and some chairs, and let's put our heads together and draw up some solutions to the food shortages and the troubles with soldiers. We'll want something definite to bring to the court. And get the Dragon in here when he's done with the treasure or whatever you have him doing."

Mermie bowed and headed for the door. "Right away, Your Majesty."

"Grab a chair, Prime Minister Bone," Thorn told her friend. "I want that bone head of yours to give us a fresh angle."

Bone nodded and went to find a seat he could climb into.

88888

Days passed. In the evenings after meeting with advisors and officials and working on the proclamations, Thorn had to train. She had slept a scant six hours in the last three days, but the Headmaster insisted that she had to make up time. "Any queen of this Valley," he insisted, "must be able to move in two worlds at once."

"But I'm the Veni-yan-cari," she answered.

"And for that reason you are more dangerous if untrained," he said, knitting his ratty eyebrows together in a scowl. "Ideally, you would have learned under the Veni-yan at Old Man's Cave for eight months out of the year from age five until your coronation, but we do not have that luxury now, so you will learn under me when time permits."

Thorn was sullen. The Headmaster's mental exercises were painful. "Aren't I the queen?" she asked. "Can't I do what I want?"

The Headmaster grunted. "Young miss, you are queen of this Valley, and I will obey your orders reverently when we are in public, but behind closed doors I am Headmaster and you are pupil, and so it has always been. If you insist on acting like a child, then I shall thrash you like one. Is that clear?"

She didn't look up or answer.

The Headmaster's hard face grew milder. "You have much to learn, Your Highness, and I realize it is difficult. Weights for which you never asked have been placed upon your shoulders." He put a hand on her arm and gave her a small smile. "All is not lost. You shall grow into your role. Now, let us begin."

88888

Thorn was learning to respect the old Headmaster, but she was learning to dislike her own grandmother. Gran'ma Ben knew two things well: cows and war. Thorn already knew more than enough about cows, but Gran'ma insisted she know war as well.

"My mother didn't fight," Thorn argued during one of their many sessions on the practice floor.

"Your mother didn't have to," Gran'ma snapped. "She had others to fight for her--me, for instance. But even your mother engaged in the ritual battle. The people expect it, Thorn. They want to know that their queen can protect them."

The aderat, a fight between the queen and selected Veni-yan warriors, typically accompanied the monarch's public appearances. When Thorn first heard of the ritual, she thought it a needless show of brutality, and Fone Bone agreed. Thorn and Bone stood together in the middle of the practice floor while Gran'ma, sword in hand, paced around them.

"You're tellin' me the Veni-yan think it's an honor to fight th' queen and get their butts kicked?" Bone asked.

"Of course, Bone," Gran'ma replied. "It proves the queen has indeed learned the Veni-yan way and can fight like them. It is a means by which she and the warriors display their Dreaming Power."

"What if the queen loses?" Thorn asked.

"That happens sometimes," Gran'ma answered. "Normally, as long as she displays competence and prowess, it matters little. Now, however, the people are restless and know their queen is a Veni-yan-cari. It is important you win, but the six Veni-yan you fight will not pull punches. You know my own training gives me unusual strength and speed; your strength and speed, if you learn to control your powers, will surpass mine and surpass those of the Veni-yan."

"I've already done those kinds of things--" Thorn began.

Gran'ma shook her head. "Only when stressed! You've used your powers on instinct, but you must learn to control them. Could you levitate to the ceiling right now if I asked you to?"

Thorn thought about it and shook her head.

"A fully-trained Veni-yan-cari can levitate herself or other objects at will. You must learn these things, and you must learn them before you appear to the people the day after tomorrow. So," Gran'ma said, hefting a heavy sword, "get ready for a crash course."

Hesitantly, Thorn drew.

"Uh...maybe I better stand against th' wall or somethin'," Bone said as he got out of the way.

Thorn and Gran'ma battled around the room, increasing the speed of their strikes until their movements blurred. Gran'ma made a vicious swipe for Thorn's legs; Thorn leapt, flipped in the air, and landed behind Gran'ma's back. Gran'ma spun just in time to parry Thorn's blow.

"You would have cut my legs off," Thorn said through clenched teeth.

"Are you mad?" Gran'ma asked.

"Yes!"

"Good! Anger is powerful. Channel it!" Gran'ma attacked. At first, Thorn fell back, but then her face grew peaceful and she hit back hard until Gran'ma retreated.

"Jeez," Bone whispered as he watched. Something about the display chilled him. Gran'ma's overprotectiveness had changed, but into what? Was Gran'ma driving Thorn to make up for her own failures and Thorn's inexperience?

If she drove Thorn too hard, would Thorn break?

Bone's stomach clenched.

With a powerful swipe, Thorn knocked the sword from Gran'ma's hand. Gran'ma tumbled to the floor, breathing hard.

Lowering the sword, Thorn bent over to help her up, but Gran'ma responded by socking Thorn in the jaw. Stunned, Thorn fell.

Gran'ma stood and brushed herself off. "Never let your guard down before an opponent," she said. "If that had been one of the Veni-yan in the ritual, you would have been disgraced."

Thorn sat there, panting. As Gran'ma left the room, Fone Bone ran over and placed a hand on Thorn's shoulder.

"Hey..." Bone said.

"She...she never hit me before," Thorn whispered.

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That was two days ago. Queen's Square was now ready for the queen's arrival: the sellers' booths were gone and a large canopy overshadowed a portable oak throne in the square's center. The queen mother sat in a chair to the right of the vacant seat, and Fone Bone sat on the left. The court advisors and a host of the Veni-yan stood behind.

Thorn, feeling foolish in a leather jerkin, stood in the square's center and faced six hooded Veni-yan as around her the people of the city cheered and yelled and ranted.

The Veni-yan raised their swords and bowed. Thorn did likewise and poised for combat.

The fighting was swift. The Veni-yan were poorly trained and none of them was as competent as Gran'ma. Thorn whirled around the marketplace, carefully but rapidly placing her feet as she engaged each of the fighters in turn, testing them.

She remembered the Headmaster's training and eased her mind halfway into the Dreaming, sensing the interrelationships of the fighters around her. After some initial hesitation, she found she could sense what each of the six Veni-yan was doing even when he was out of her range of vision. She connected the sword to her Dreaming Eye and knew its exact length and balance as if it were an extension of her arm. She condensed the Dreaming around herself to enhance her strength...

One of the warriors behind her leapt high overhead. The crowd gasped. Thorn sensed the attack, disengaged from the two she was fighting, tucked, and rolled backwards out of the way. When the would-be victor descended to the ground, Thorn gave him a smack on the back with the flat of her blade. The people roared in admiration and banged their feet against the cobbles, chanting, "Har-ve-star! Har-ve-star!"

Thorn grinned. She could learn to like this.

In the ritual, an opponent was dispatched when disarmed. Thorn decided it was time to get rid of a few. She had crossed swords with each now and had sized up his strengths and weaknesses. She went first for the two poorest fighters. One she disarmed with a hard blow that wedged the tip of his sword between two cobbles in the pavement. For the other, she used the same trick she had used with Gran'ma and flipped in the air, landing behind him. She struck his blade with an overhand blow while simultaneously kicking his wrist. As she expected, he dropped the weapon.

Four to go, Thorn thought. She faced three at once, using her superior speed to block their attacks. The audience was again shouting her name and whistling. Thorn felt her arm straining and her hand numbing, but she could tell the one on her left was tiring. If she could find an opening--

Without even thinking, she spun and slashed a deep cut across the arm of the Veni-yan sneaking up behind her. He had been reaching into his cloak, but he swiftly withdrew his hand when he saw he was maimed. His blood dropped in large globs to the pavement.

The people hushed. The fists they had been pounding against walls, railings, and windowsills paused in midair. Against the laws of the ritual, the queen had drawn blood.

Thorn slashed again, cutting open the man's cloak. A dagger clattered to the pavement.

The Veni-yan she had been dueling grabbed the man. One picked up the dagger and sniffed it. "Poison," he said.

They yanked the man's hood off, revealing a bright red beard and keen, angry green eyes. One of the Veni-yan said, "That's Erasmus, formerly of the Vedu."

Erasmus struggled against the men holding him. "Dragon-worshipping scum!" he hissed. "You've not won yet, Harvestar!" He turned and shouted to all the people, "The Holy City of humans for the humans!"

Gran'ma ran to Thorn's side.

"Take him to the dungeon," Thorn said.

"Your Highness," Gran'ma whispered, "the penalty for an attack on the queen's life is death."

"Take him to the dungeon," Thorn repeated.

Erasmus gnashed his teeth as his eyes gleamed. "Filth!" he screamed. "You debase our city with dragon filth!" He managed to free an arm and point at the shocked Fone Bone while the Veni-yan struggled to hold him. "And there!" Erasmus screamed again. "You bring that thing into our city! He graces your throne during the day, Harvestar, but everyone in Atheia knows he graces your bed at night!"

Fone Bone didn't know what that meant, but he knew Erasmus was attacking Thorn's honor. As the noise of the crowd rose until it was deafening, he stood on his seat and shouted, "That's a lie! It's a lie!"

Thorn flushed. All the anger of the last few days came out. She grabbed Erasmus by the throat and lifted him. His eyes bulged, his face turned purple, and then his neck broke as Thorn tightened her grip. She let go and Erasmus sagged to the pavement.

Fone Bone stopped shouting, lowered his hands, and stared. The contortion in Thorn's face made her look like someone else, someone he didn't know. It reminded him of the way she looked when the Locust moved between them, and it frightened him. Super-strength, ritual battles, broken necks--was the power that flowed from the Dreaming good for nothing but war?

Thorn calmed, and as she did, the horror of what she had done struck her. She looked at her hand in disbelief. She turned it over, staring at it, gawking at the freckles, nails, and ribbed calluses as if they weren't hers, as if a stranger's hand had attached itself to the end of her arm.

Thorn didn't know how many people she had killed. She knew about Kingdok, and she had bashed a few skulls on the walls of Atheia, but she did not know how many people she had killed, and that struck her as sad, both that she had killed at all, and that she did not know who.

She had looked only two of her victims in the eye.

Kingdok.

And Erasmus.

She was shaking. Part of it was adrenaline leaving her bloodstream, and part of it was grief. Gran'ma wrapped a cloak around her and led her to the throne as the Veni-yan stumbled away with the body. As she sat down, Thorn realized the people were clapping, cheering, and stomping. They approved her action. She thought back to her own comments about the ritual battle, and she thought back to the Headmaster's comment about mobs.

Mobs. I rule a bloodthirsty mob. They like to see their queen fight, but more than that, they like to see her kill.

And maybe, she thought, they like to see her stripped down to a leather jerkin. She felt exposed and pulled the cloak tighter about her body. She had never been modest before, but she had never had occasion to be.

The Headmaster's whispers cut into her thoughts. His voice was beside her ear: "Your Highness, it would be a good idea to begin making your declarations."

She nodded.

Fone Bone watched Thorn with growing disease. Shallow, rapid breathing and clammy skin. Shock? He tried to remember; it had been a long time since sixth grade health class.

Thorn tried to compose herself. She took a few gulps of air and spoke.

"I apologize for the time I have been away from you, my people. You have suffered much for Atheia in the last few years, but the time of our darkness is ending. In my first official act as queen, I hereby lift the curfew and martial law imposed during my absence."

The crowd broke into a new applause that rumbled through the pavement.

Then Thorn lost it.

"And I, uh--" Her voice wandered off. Her eyes glazed, and she looked around as if she didn't know where she was. She looked at Bone, or rather she looked past him, and whispered, "...Fone Bone?"

Fone Bone's body broke into sweat. He hated public speaking, but he nonetheless stood in his chair and tried to cover. He looked at Gran'ma Ben and saw her frowning.

He swallowed and stared at the masses of people filling windows and lining roofs around the square. He cleared his throat. "Uh, hi there," he said. "I'm...um...I'm Fone Bone. Prime minister in these parts. Uh..."

He glanced toward Thorn and Gran'ma again and saw that Gran'ma's frown had deepened. He pressed on. "We decided...er, Her Highness, Queen Thorn Harvestar, decided that...that this whole ash plume thing sorta bites."

The faces around the square registered confusion. Gran'ma put her head in her hands.

"And anyways," Bone continued, "her Highness said, or decreed, or whatever you call it...that..." He thought back. The whole thing had been his idea after all, born of half-remembered phrases from ag class. He cleared his throat and spoke more confidently, "Farmers whose lands were only mildly affected by the ash are encouraged to till the ash into the soil and plant legumes--um, that's beans--to fix nitrogen...er, never mind why, just do it. Furthermore, it is necessary to clear streams and rivers choked with ash or fallen trees, and so Her Highness will organize teams, paid from the city treasury, to repair the waterways and build dams or retaining walls where necessary to prevent undercutting of the streambeds. Furthermore, since Her Highness, myself, most Veni-yan, and a few others can communicate with animals, a delegation will contact beavers and other aquatic animals to enlist their help in this important work.

"Furthermore, those lands so decimated by the Locust, the ash, or the war as to be unfit for farming shall be planted with grass and then over time with larger plants and trees as the state of the land allows, and they shall be recovered for farming or, barring this, become rangeland for cattle.

"Also, an official ambassador shall be named to Pawa in order that relationships between our two peoples may improve. And, uh...that's it."

The people murmurred and a only a few clapped.

"Sit...down...Bone," Gran'ma hissed through clenched teeth.

Bone sat and looked at Thorn. The color was returning to her face. She smiled weakly at Fone Bone, and then invited the people to approach the throne with their grievances and pleas.

That took hours. More than a few wanted the honor of coming to the queen for judgment, even if their matters were trifles. Several times, Thorn turned to Fone Bone and asked his opinion. On most occassions, she took the advice he offered. Bone watched the people walking away frustrated or unhappy. Bone imagined they were thinking of the accusation of Erasmus and perhaps beginning to believe it. Gran'ma's scowl grew harder and more pronounced.

When the sun was near setting, the Veni-yan stepped in front of the queen and pushed the people back. The lengthiest and most exhausting part of the ceremony was over. Only one thing was left.

It had been Thorn's idea. Footmen for the last several days had been gathering stories of civilian bravery during the war, and Thorn intended to decorate the bravest with honors and give them medals. The men and women chosen to receive the queen's graces marched forward, flanked by two Veni-yan with upraised swords.

When Fone Bone looked at the war heroes, his heart sank. The boyish figure in front was at first hard to recognize with his shirt on, but there was no mistaking his bushy blonde hair, his upturned nose, his self-satisfied attitude, and his stupid hat. At the front of the line was--

"Tom?" Thorn asked.

"Your Highness," he said, kneeling and touching two fingers to his curly locks. "Would you believe it? I was in Pawa gathering honey when the ghost circles hit. I joined other rebels and we harried Pawanian supply lines. Eighteen Pawans and twelve rat creatures dead by my hand, my liege, if my count is accurate."

"And it probably isn't," Fone Bone grumbled.

Still kneeling, Tom bowed deeply. As he raised his head, he whispered, "If I had only known I spent a bright spring afternoon in the arms of the crown princess." His voice was so quiet that only those immediately around the throne could hear.

Fone Bone gripped the arms of his chair until he thought his fingers would make permanent impressions in the wood. He looked at Tom kneeling and Thorn staring, and he realized as the organs in his middle seemed to give way to a cavern that things were about to change.

88888

"Ah," Phoney Bone said as the sprawling cityscape appeared in the broad valley before them, "Boneville."

"Wow, it sure is good to be home again," Smiley Bone said. The enormous grin that Phoney always found creepy spread from Smiley's nose to his chest.

"Yeah, yeah," Phoney said. "Before we waltz in, we better make sure th' townspeople have cooled their jets."

Phoney had been right about the desert journey. The cow cart and a straight path had cut their travel time by a third, but they had still run low on supplies midway through the trip. Phoney had insisted that they slaughter the cows. By that time, Smiley had already named both of the bovine beasts and claimed to be their lifelong friends, but Phoney could see the cows were done for. Smiley petted and consoled them as Bartleby, forced in spite of his own objections, gashed the cows' throats with his teeth.

As Phoney put it, Bartleby was the only sharp tool handy.

Bartleby warmed to the task when he tasted blood, of which he had eaten precious little when feeding on the diet of bread and fruit provided him by Smiley and Fone Bone. Bartleby skeletonized one cow while Phoney pulled off his shirt, found a chunk of flint, and set about the grisly task of cutting a few steaks off the other. Much as he hated labor, Phoney was willing to do it if it staved off starvation or dehydration. Earlier in the journey, he had instructed Smiley to milk the cows each morning to stretch the water supply. But as the cows bled onto the hot sands and Smiley wept nearby, Phoney knew he'd have to do this job himself.

Now, if there were only enough water to wash with...

After that, travel was on foot. The blood and meat were enough to sustain Bartleby for a few days, but the bones were less fortunate. Most of their luggage consisted of large, heavy boxes and cumbersome water bags. The bones drank their fill and then Smiley heaved the last bag over his shoulders. Phoney stuffed the voluminous pockets of his shirt with bread-thingies, gathered the rest into a crate, and tied the crate to Bartleby's back. Smiley suggested that Phoney carry the crate himself. Phoney ignored him.

With no cart, they had no shelter during the sweltering days. As they traveled under the stars, Phoney steered them near cliffs and overhangs so they could seek shade when the sun rose. As the water dwindled, their muscles ached and cramped. Smiley stooped lower and lower under the shrinking water bag. Phoney touched his bloodstained hands to the pockets with the dwindling supply of bread-thingies and thought to himself, If Fone Bone were here, it'd be another mouth to feed. We might not have made it.

But under Phoney's firm hand, they made it. Boneville lay before them.

Boneville was huge. Set in fertile lowland, its farms stretched to the south along the Rolling Bone River. The suburbs sprawled to the north, and the city center lay in between with its few modest skyscrapers and a hodgepodge of shorter buildings. To the east of the city center, along the river, was the Big Johnson Memorial Park and Interpretive Center where Phoney had given his ill-fated campaign speech over a year ago. Approaching the town from the southeast, the three friends gazed across the broad river, fresh with spring runoff, and into the green park where the apple trees were beginning to bloom. It was near dawn and the sky behind the city lightened to a mild blue tinged with purple. The flat glow of the skyscraper windows and streetlights became less pronounced.

Bartleby's hackles rose. "I-I'm scared, Smiley," Bartleby said in his high, raspy voice. His normally bulbous eyes were even wider than usual.

"Ah, don't be scared, pal," Smiley said, petting him. "You're gonna like Boneville."

"He's never seen a real city before," Phoney muttered. "Jeez, what are we gonna do with a giant rat in Boneville? Look, let's lay low 'til we get to th' river. We'll ford it and when we get in the park, let's stash th' rat and scope the town."

"Phoney!" Smiley admonished. "We can't just--"

"We're not," Phoney snapped. "It's only temporary. Bartleby, you think you can cut it on your own a few hours?"

"I guess so," Bartleby whispered.

"Ya see?" Phoney said. "Now, c'mon. My adoring fans await."

The Rolling Bone was broad, deep, and swift, and it gave the bones an opportunity to wash off the sweat--and in Phoney's case, blood and offal--of the desert. There were docks on either side of the river and Phoney borrowed a canoe for the brief crossing. "Bartleby," he ordered, "swim alongside to make sure we don't get pulled downstream. Smiley, row."

Smiley grumbled but did as Phoney said. As the rushing water slammed against the boat and Bartleby paddled laboriously, Phoney's floating unibrow lowered over his eyes in concentration. Smiley never used to grumble.

When they reached the opposite dock, Phoney tied up the boat. With dawn upon them, the bones and rat creature stole into the park under the shade of the trees.

"Hey, look, Phoney," Smiley said, pointing. "They got th' statue of Big Johnson Bone back on its base!" Indeed, the enormous bronze figure of the tough bone, standing tall in his deerskin clothes, was upright and seemed to have suffered little from Phoney's fiasco.

"Yeah, great," Phoney said. "Maybe th' townspeople have forgotten the whole thing."

They made their way past the reconstruction of Big Johnson's trading post and stopped near the row of dumpsters behind the modern, glassed-in interpretive center. "Bartleby, you stay here," Phoney said. Bartleby, fur still standing upright, nodded. Phoney grabbed Smiley's arm and dragged him toward Main Street while Smiley cast nervous looks back toward the park.

Phoney was relieved to be away from the oppressive, dead human architecture with its rustic materials and heavy, rigid lines. Bone skyscrapers soared into the air and flared outward as they did. Even the smaller, older buildings tended to expand upward from their bases like balloons. Many of the old brick structures had single doors and double upper story windows, together resembling mouths and eyes. The "eye" windows were complete with floating pupils that followed passers-by, and a few of the shops had arms that waved at Smiley and Phoney as they strolled down the street.

"Ah," Phoney said, inhaling deep, "Boneville. It's good to breathe th' smog o' th' city again. All that fresh farm air was givin' me a headache."

"I wonder how Fone Bone is doing," Smiley whispered as they walked onto the sidewalk beside Main Street's parade of one-room shops.

"What?" Phoney asked. "Who cares? What's wrong with him, anyways? What's he chasin' some human broad for?"

"Even you said she was incredibly good lookin'," Smiley answered.

Phoney rounded on him. "I never said that."

"You did," Smiley insisted.

"Huh, like you have the world's greatest memory," Phoney said. "Alright, so she was th' only young female in, what, a million miles? But when I had the chance to get outta there--bam! I was gone! Why can't Fone be like that? Why can't he respect bone women?"

At that moment, elderly Miss Crab-Bone rounded the corner, doing her daily shopping. She wore her usual shawl and her little straw hat with the flower hanging out of it, and she had an umbrella cane dangling from one arm. Phoney made a bow when he saw her.

"Well, hel-lo, Miss Crab-Bone," Phoney said, doing his best to be polite. "How nice to see you today."

She stopped, stared, and shook her umbrella. "Phoncible P. Bone, I do declare! Haven't they strung you up yet, you menace? Someday they'll run you out of this town for good, you conniving, money-grubbing thief!" She marched past in a huff.

"Stupid old bat," Phoney grumbled.

Smiley lit a cigar and puffed. "Looks like your popularity remains high."

"Stuff it, cheese-for-brains. Miss Crab-Bone's had it in for me ever since I was in her first grade class."

Miss Crab-Bone rushed back around the corner with someone in tow. Phoney's heart sank when he saw who it was--his nemesis, the mayor of Boneville, Rictus Bone.

Rictus Bone was not as enormous as the towering Smiley, but he was a head taller than Phoney and was almost as wide as he was tall. He took his role as community leader seriously and went about in a vest, coattails, monocle, and a high silk hat. Generous nose in the air, he disengaged from the near-frantic Miss Crab-Bone and strolled up to the Bone cousins.

"Well, well," he said, pulling the lengthy cigarette holder from his mouth, "if it isn't that criminal Phoncible P. Bone and his reprobate companion Smilesinal Bone! I rather wondered what happened to you two. We ran you out of town, what, over a year ago?"

"Somethin' like that," Phoney said, "and I seem to recall you declarin' a holiday so the kids could throw rocks at me. I won't forget that."

"Hmm hmm," Rictus chuckled with his lips pursed, "and I seem to recall you trying to remove me from office. I won't forget that." He adjusted his monocle and sniffed. "Ah, but I see your ways have caught up with you, Phoncible. You usually return in a grand car surrounded by the treasure reaped from your exploitations outside our fair city. Now you seem to have nothing but the star shirt on your back."

"Hey, gimme time," Phoney said. "I'm just gettin' started, and at least I don't have to embezzle money outta th' city treasury to make my wealth."

Rictus Bone started, but quickly resumed his haughty air, clamping his cigarette holder between his gold teeth. "Couldn't ever prove that, could you, Phoney? And do you think there is a bone in all of Boneville who believes you wouldn't embezzle funds, given the chance?"

Rictus gave Phoney an infuriating little wink and then turned to Smiley and looked him over. "You look fit, young Smiley, considering you smoke like a chimney." With a mayoral air, he clapped his hands on Smiley's shoulders. "It's good to have you back; the pigeons in the park have been getting restless."

Smiley gave Rictus one of his huge grins and made an exaggerated salute. "I'll get right on it, Mayor Rictus Bone, sir. I won't let the city down."

Rictus raised a floating eybrow toward the fuming Phoney, chuckled again in his peculiar manner, and turned away. "Come, Miss Crab-Bone," he called to the elderly bone lady, "you need fear no harm from these two, even if they are--what was that phrase you used?--incorrigible villains." He took Miss Crab-Bone's arm and the two headed down the street, fading into the early morning crowd.

Smiley smiled at the backs of the mayor and teacher. "Ah," he said, "Boneville."

"Shut up, Smiley," Phoney growled. "Rrrrr...if it weren't for those prunes, I woulda won that election. He bleeds Boneville dry and I get run outta town."

"Yeah, you dried ever'body out in a way Rictus prob'ly never thought of," Smiley agreed.

"Shut up," Phoney said, but his anger soon abated and he put a hand to his chin. "Hmm...I must say, though--Rictus has given me an idea. I'll give him a run for his money he won't forget. You with me?"

Smiley grinned again as he pulled on the cigar. "As always, Cuz. You know I like to help."

Phoney nodded. "Let's head over to Floyd's place and get the gossip. I'll know how to move from there."

Phoney headed toward the little barbershop, but Smiley grabbed his shoulder. "Phoney," Smiley admonished, "what about Bartleby?"

Phoney's mood grew worse and he felt his stomach sour. This rat creature was going to be trouble. The thing's presence had made Smiley into a rebel, and Phoney knew why: Smiley never had anything to care about before.

"He'll be fine while we're gone!" Phoney said, slapping Smiley's hand from his shoulder. "He's a big boy and ya gotta let 'im go on 'is own sometimes or you'll make 'im into a mamma's rat! Now, c'mon, we're goin' ta Floyd's!"

88888

Floyd Bone's little shop was near Round Square, Boneville's central hub, a park in the roundabout connecting Main Street with Big Johnson Way. When the cousins crossed Main and entered the square, Smiley Bone stopped to pay homage at the towering stone memorial to the victims of the Custard Pie Incident. He traced his fingers over the well-worn names of his parents, Happinal "Happy" Bone and Ameliaorana "Amiable" Bone. Smiley removed his little hat and his eyes watered. Much to Phoney's disgust, Smiley genuflected and kissed the stone's base.

"Why do you always do that?" Phoney asked in embarrassment as Smiley readjusted the hat on his head.

Smiley tipped his long nose into the air and said down to Phoney, "It's important to pay one's respects to one's ancestors, Phoney Bone."

"Yeah, well they never did nothin' fer us," said Phoney. "Everythin' that kept you an' that ungrateful Fone Bone alive was from me." He jerked a thumb at himself and spun around to head across the street. Smiley had to grab him and pick him up to keep him from walking into traffic.

At last, they darted across the busy roundabout and stood before Floyd Bone's famous old-fashioned barbershop. The shop was a centerpiece of Boneville, and the plaque over the door proudly boasted, "Floyd Bone's Tonsorium, est. 1808." A red-striped barber pole swirled beside the flaking paint on the doorframe. Phoney shoved the heavy door open and a bell hanging from the inside knob announced his arrival.

Floyd Bone XI, the tenth successor to the original Floyd Bone, was one of the few male bones with hair on his head. His hair billowed out in luxurious, tight strawberry curls, so from a distance he was frequently mistaken for a girl. Floyd was tall and thin, almost as tall as Smiley, and his face had unusual deep hollows at the cheeks. His nose was strangely small and his eyes oddly bright, and the nasty rumor around town was that one of the Floyds in that venerable line had produced these traits by a tryst with a human wench from Portsmouth, though Floyd XI denied it and even insisted he had a pedigree. When he wore his leather apron and held scissors and razors in his big hands, Floyd looked like some strange, primeval god of ritual hair removal. New customers often quailed at his appearance, but when he had them in the barber's chair, he put them at ease with his rumbling basso voice, his honest interest in their lives, and his encyclopedic knowledge of Boneville's latest shenanigans. As the cousins entered the shop, Floyd was clipping the blonde tresses of little six-year-old Dolly Bone. Floyd looked up only briefly and showed no surprise at the latest arrivals.

"'Lo, Phoney Bone, 'lo, Smiley Bone." His voice rumbled like the tide rolling in. "Back already? What kin I do ya for?"

"Trim the ol' unibrow and gimme a hot towel," Phoney said. "No rush, though."

"Nope, no rush," Floyd answered.

"Look," Dolly shouted to Smiley Bone. "Look, Mister Smiley! I lost anudder toof!" She opened her mouth to show the space where the tooth had been.

"Wow!" Smiley said as he bent down to see. "You sure are growin' up, Miss Dolly!" Floyd only smiled and paused in his clipping to ensure that he didn't make a wrong cut when Dolly moved.

Phoney let Smiley talk to the kid while he set about his true business. Floyd's was not just a place where those few bones blessed with hair or beards could get them trimmed: it was also a center of the town's gossip. Two old codgers, Dougie Bone and Gnarly Bone, always sat on the bench along the wall with folded newspapers in their laps and a half-finished game of Checkers between them. Gnarly Bone sometimes smoked his pipe, so the shop's close air contained the bitter, sharp smell of aged, whiskey-flavored tobacco as well as the musky scent of aftershave and hair oil. As Phoney expected, Dougie and Gnarly were there now. Those two, it seemed, were there when Boneville began and probably would be there when it crumbled to the earth.

Phoney sat on the bench next to Dougie Bone. "Got a plug on ya, Dougie?" he asked. Phoney didn't normally chew, but had learned it was a good way to start Dougie Bone talking.

Dougie nodded in his somber way, ran a hand through his gray beard, and then reached into the pocket of his overalls to find his tobacco. While Dougie was at it, Gnarly Bone pulled out his pipe and began tamping it. He lit up as Phoney and Dougie each tucked a pinch in his lip.

Phoney grimaced at the taste. It had been a while. "What's da scoop?" he asked. "How's Boneville been while I been out? Humans actin' up?"

Gnarly Bone pulled a trumpet out of his pocket and put it against his ear. "Eh?" he asked. "Humans?"

"Nah," Dougie said as he chewed. "Ain't seen a 'uman in Boneville fer ages. They stay down south in Portsmouth. Trade's back up, though. Guess they forgiven us fer when you took 'em to th' cleaners."

Gnarly, straining to hear, cackled dryly and coughed. "What was it ya did to 'em, Phoney Bone? I 'eard ya got away with all their cash at some institute 'r other you founded. What was it? The New Age School of Lozenges and Bungy-jumping?"

"Somethin' like that," Phoney said as he squirmed. He shuddered at those memories. That was his first serious encounter with humans and he learned things he never wanted to know. He killed the uncomfortable topic, saying, "But you'll never guess where Smiley an' I been. We found a valley across the desert, and there's humans there, too."

Gnarly and Dougie frowned over their tobacco. "Lotta the world's unexplored still," Dougie said. "Weren't the Valley o' th' Full-Figured Gals, were it?"

"Tha's west o' here!" Gnarly insisted. "Desert's to the east!"

Dougie shook his head. "Humans is trouble. Used ta kill us fer our skins. Savages, th' lot of 'em. Tha's why they 'ad ta turn ol' Big Johnson's tradin' post inta Fort Bone, an' tha's why alla bones are 'ere now 'stead o' spread out like we used ta be. Portsmouth humans don' mess 'round much, cuz they know we got guns. But if'n you saw other humans--savage humans--you kin bet they's trouble."

"Yeah, trouble, sure," Phoney agreed. "Lis'n, I'll tell ya somethin' interestin'. This Valley we was in, there weren't just humans in it. There was strange stuff. Really strange stuff. And if any bones were to come to my old mansion around, say, six in the evenin' next Tuesday, they might see somethin' pretty fascinatin'."

Gnarly and Dougie looked impressed, and they both nodded eagerly. Phoney grinned and rubbed his hands together. It had begun--rumors spread fast in Boneville, and they spread the fastest through Gnarly and Dougie Bone.

Dolly Bone, plump cheeks glowing under her new hairdo, slid out of the barber's chair and beamed at Smiley, who praised Floyd's craftsmanship. Floyd merely cleaned his scissors in the sink and said, "Next."

Phoney slid into the chair with a vicious smile across his face. Smiley, he knew, wouldn't like what Phoney had in mind, but Phoney knew how to control Smiley. Usually.

Ah, thought Phoney as Floyd began clipping his floating unibrow, Boneville.

**Next: The Courtship of Thorn Harvestar**


	3. The Courtship of Thorn Harvestar

The Chronicles of Fone Bone Oathbreaker

D. G. D. Davidson

BONE is © 2006 by Jeff Smith.

**Chapter 3: The Courtship of Thorn Harvestar**

_How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends._

--Herman Melville, _Moby-Dick_

They were broke, but at least they had a roof over their heads. The first time the bones ran Phoney out of Boneville, they had confiscated his property along with his liquid assets, so when he returned and reacquired the mansion, he placed it in a trust to ensure that it, at least, would be untouchable. He stood now in the copious library and ran his hands over the various books on the shelves. The books were actually Fone Bone's, bought with whatever cash Fone Bone could scrounge. Fone always insisted that Phoney fill that huge library, but Phoney didn't care for books: Fone Bone's collection was only enough for a couple of shelves, so the rest were empty and gathering dust.

Phoney had never had any interest in the musty second-hand volumes before, but now he traced his fingers over the flaked gold lettering on the spines and contemplated the titles: The Complete William Shakespeare, The Collected Works of Edgar Allen Poe, The Iliad, Paradise Lost, The Divine Comedy, the King James Bible, A Tale of Two Cities, Josephus' Complete Works, Herodotus' Histories, Spencer's Faerie Queene, The Canterbury Tales, Faust, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. If it was boring, Fone Bone would read it. Phoney had always known that, but now he realized something else.

All these books had human authors. Phoney had never noticed and never cared before.

He grabbed a book. It was The Iliad. He flipped it open and began reading:

With streaming blood the slippery fields are dyed,

And slaughter'd heroes swell the dreadful tide.

O'er heaven's clear azure spread the sacred light,

Communal death the fate of war confounds,

Each adverse battle gored with equal wounds.

That was more than enough for Phoney. He slammed the thick tome shut and stuck it back on the shelf. He didn't understand it very well, but could tell it was about violence. Was that all humans cared about? Blood and death? And why did Fone Bone read such things?

Phoney looked to the center of the room. Sitting there was the large steel cage left over from his failed combination slaughterhouse and petting zoo. Phoney had meant to sell the cage years ago, but had never gotten around to it. Now it served another purpose.

At the table nearby, Smiley was eating takeout from Corn Dog Hut™. Corn Dog Hut™ was Smiley's favorite restaurant because he liked to play with the corn dog sticks after he finished eating, but now Smiley was sullen, bending over his side dish of coleslaw and chewing on it with unusual determination.

"It just isn't right," Smiley started again. "Bartleby would never hurt anybody. Why put him in that cage?"

"It's just for a while," Phoney reminded him. "'Til the townsfolk get used to 'im. Besides, Bartleby doesn't mind. Do ya, Bartleby?"

Bartleby was lying near the cage, looking as dejected as Smiley. He raised his head, shook it, and lay it back down.

"Ya see?" Phoney said.

Actually, Bartleby did mind the cage, but he got in it anyway. Every night now, the bones came to gawk at him while Phoney charged them steep admission prices and lectured for hours on the terrors of the "human valley across the desert." Bartleby stared at the bones staring at him, and inside he felt fear--fear that if the cage weren't there, he might do something terrible.

When he tasted the blood of the cow in the desert, something awoke in him. Raw flesh and sweet, sticky blood filled his maw and drained down his gullet. He had never tasted its like before. He knew then what it was to be a rat creature: he gorged and gorged until it seemed his abdomen would burst, and even then, he wanted more. When he turned his orb-like eyes toward Phoney and Smiley, he felt the saliva building in his mouth.

No, no. Not Smiley. Not even Phoney. They were his pals.

Yet when they walked at night under the stars, Bartleby felt his instincts awaken, for he was a nocturnal creature. It would be so easy to pounce, rend, and tear the warm, quivering flesh from either of his companions. In his dreams, he saw Smiley as small as a mouse, with his face contorted in fear as he ran. Bartleby always caught him and batted him back and forth between his claws--and then Bartleby awoke, guilty and afraid.

When they left him behind the interpretive center, Bartleby crawled into one of the dumpsters to hide. It seemed so natural, when that bone opened the dumpster, to grab him and pull him inside. After all, it wasn't Phoney or Smiley. Bartleby didn't even think.

He'd eaten most of his prey before he realized what he'd done. After that, he made short work of the bone and hid the evidence. Now guilt was his constant companion, but he still couldn't forget the taste of that sweet, succulent, aromatic flesh. He was afraid for his friends. He was afraid of what he might do.

So he got in the cage.

Nightly, the bones came. They pointed, poked, mocked. Bartleby bore the treatment with silent resolve. It was his penance. One of them was now dead by his doing, life crushed out between his scissors-like teeth, and none of them knew.

Above the gawking spectators, the diminutive Phoney strode back and forth like a pacing giant. With each presentation, he added new lurid details to the wonders and terrors of the Human Valley. With breathless aplomb, he recounted the awful battle that led to the capture of this savage rat creature. The bones gasped in fright. Women clutched their children.

Smiley stood by and watched with tears in his eyes. He would have done something, would have said something, if only Bartleby asked. But Bartleby only shook his head, glowing eyes downcast.

"Why?" Smiley would whisper after the crowds had dispersed. "Why let Phoney do this? You're my pal. You're not a...a monster!"

I am a monster, Bartleby thought, but he wouldn't say it aloud. Smiley wouldn't--couldn't--understand. Some people are born monsters.

His eyes moved toward Phoney, who stood in the dark corner, counting his money.

And some are monsters by choice.

"There is no place for me," Bartleby murmured with a high, raspy voice grown dry and cold in the dust-tinged emptiness of the library. "I have no place with my own people, and I have no place with the bones. I should have known that, but I was too young to understand."

"You're still young, Bartleby."

"I grow older by the day."

"You're so young!" Smiley protested. "Don't spend your life in a cage!"

Phoney stood across the room, thumbing through the cash from admissions. His sarcastic voice cut through the conversation. "It's temporary, Smiley Bone! Soon enough, they'll get tired of 'im. They always get tired. Then we'll tell ever'body he's tamed and they'll see what a gentle rat he is and then everything's aces--and we got the saps' money. Relax. Nothing'll go wrong."

Smiley remained silent.

He chewed his coleslaw and cleared away the remains of his meal as the bones filed in to perform their nightly ritual of gawking and gossip. Phoney gave them the biggest, toothiest smile he could muster as he fingered their proffered cash.

That night, Smiley almost spoke out, almost protested, when Miss Twyla Bone, cringing in terror from Bartleby's docile stare, turned her pouty, dew-eyed face to Phoney and asked, "Phoney Bone, whatever happened to that cousin of yours--whazzisname? The cute one."

"'E was kinda cute," Twyla's friend Jeanne Bone said, patting her frizzy hair, "but boring. I dated him once and all he could talk about was some book about a whale."

Phoney, standing on his platform, hung his head. Melodramatically, he sighed and wiped at a tear (he had long ago learned to produce tears on demand). "Oh, you mean our dear, dear Fone Bone. I'm afraid...I'm afraid he didn't make it back from the Human Valley."

The ladies gasped. "You mean," Twyla asked with a tremor in her voice, "you mean...the rats an' humans got 'im?"

"You could say that," Phoney agreed, nodding.

"Oh!" Jeanne Bone cried. "If only I had treated him better!" She buried her face in her kerchief while Twyla patted her back.

Smiley, behind the crowd, stood with his teeth clenched in a rage. This was the last straw. Phoney might use Bartleby this way, but he would not use their cousin.

Smiley almost never got angry, but when he did, his outbursts were terrifying. He would throw furniture and punch through walls. For a bone, Smiley was enormous, with strength to match his stature. Now he saw red, and his misting vision focused on his cousin standing above the crowd of gaping idiots, waving a ridiculous pointer at the caged Bartleby, telling them lies about Fone Bone...

Smiley didn't move fast enough. His rage ebbed as the pompous mayor, Rictus Bone, shoved his way to the front of the crowd and leapt onto the platform beside Phoney.

"Stop!" Rictus shouted, clutching his high silk hat. "Stop this nonsense! This has gone far enough!" He adjusted his monocle, and then he used his gentle, fatherly voice, the one that had gotten him repeatedly elected as the city's premier community leader.

"My friends," Rictus said, "my brothers, my sisters, my constituency." He picked out bones who didn't vote for him and looked each in the eye. "Dear, dear bones. You, Lunate Bone. You, Frank Bone. You, Delilah Bone. You must know--all of you--that the humans are not our enemies any more." He sighed, shaking his head. "It is so terrible, the things that happened between our two peoples in the past. So many opportunities missed. Humans and bones could have enlightened each other, learned from each other. Instead, they killed each other. Yes, we may argue that we had reason. After all, it was self-defense. The humans skinned us for clothing. But we must acknowledge that we, too, committed atrocities. Shall we forget the Darton Massacre, when fifty bones slaughtered a human mission full of women and children in retaliation for a single bone killed outside Portsmouth? Shall we forget that our own town of Boneville, when it was still Fort Bone, displayed human heads and scalps on its gates? Shall we forget that not but five years ago, we threatened a new war on Portsmouth when we discovered that the humans had acquired modern firearms?"

A murmur ran through the crowd. Though most of Rictus's examples were events of history known only from textbooks, everyone still remembered the heated debates over the human acquisition of bone hunting rifles and assault weapons, and many still felt a "cleansing" of Portsmouth would have been the best solution. Lucky for Phoney Bone, no one knew he was the one who had smuggled guns to the humans. Phoney had turned around and sold guns to his fellow bones as well, playing on their paranoia and insisting they must arm themselves against humans if they were to protect their families. That had been one of his most profitable ventures.

"Now, now," Rictus said, raising his hands to quell the rising dissent. "Were not the people of Portsmouth patient and understanding? Did they not emphasize their remorse over the actions of their ancestors? Did they not, in the end, turn over the assault rifles and handguns and keep only the hunting rifles and shotguns? They did. No longer must we fear them. They do not hunt us for skins anymore. In fact, the only boneskin in all Portsmouth--"

The crowd booed. Everyone knew about the boneskin in the Portsmouth History Museum. Its interpretive plaque bemoaned the past treatment of bones and expressed hope for a cooperative future, but still the bones condemned the display as disgusting and demanded that the museum hand the skin over to Boneville for internment. The museum refused.

Rictus had made a mistake.

"Now, now!" Rictus said again, but it was too late. The booing and hissing drowned his voice.

Phoney smiled. When Rictus had climbed onto the platform, Phoney had been pleased. To his surprise, Rictus had done much to harm himself with his unusually clumsy lecture, but Phoney had the means to destroy him, and it was time to use it.

Phoney stood next to Rictus and, contorting his face with false compassion, raised a hand for silence. The crowd quieted immediately.

"Friends, fellow Bonevillians," Phoney said, "I regret that I must do this, but I must. This information--I had no intention of bringing it forward. I was too...ashamed. I meant to take it to my grave, but I'm afraid our mayor has left me no choice."

Rictus stared at Phoney with hard eyes, and Phoney returned the stare, unblinking. Phoney had been saving this bombshell for the mayoral campaign, but the bones had run him out of town before he could use it. But it wouldn't go to waste.

Out of the pocket of his shirt, Phoney pulled a folded sheet of paper. "In my hand," he said to the bones, "in my hand I have a notarized confession from Mammon Bone, our former city treasurer who, as you all know, disappeared mysteriously over a year ago." Phoney unfolded the letter and displayed it. "In here, he chronicles the transfer of funds from the public treasury to the private account of Rictus Bone, our mayor, and adds that he is leaving town for parts unknown because he believes Rictus will retaliate if and when this information becomes public."

The bones raised their fists and shouted in indignation. They yelled, they screamed. A voice carried over the throng: "String 'im up!"

"No!" another cried. "Run 'im out! Run 'im out just like he ran out our beloved Phoney!"

Rictus glared at Phoney Bone. He placed his cigarette holder in his mouth but clenched his teeth so hard he broke it.

"You--" Rictus hissed.

"No," Phoney whispered, shaking his head. "You."

The townspeople grabbed Rictus Bone. They ripped the hat from his head and the monocle and golden watch from his vest. They stripped him of his fine clothes and hauled him into the street. A barrel of tar, a bag of feathers, and a rail appeared. The townspeople put them to good use, and after a long procession with much whooping and carrying-on, they dumped a very sticky and very ruffled Rictus Bone in the Rolling Bone River.

When it was over, the bones gathered around Phoney. Night after night, he had played on their fears. They would follow Phoney Bone because he had used the most powerful weapon at his disposal, the one he had honed so well in Barrelhaven when for a short while he was the Dragonslayer. He worked their prejudice and molded it to his liking.

Phoney Bone knows the way.

Phoney Bone can help you.

Phoney Bone can make all your nightmares come true.

"We're so sorry about your cousin," Twyla Bone said.

"Damn humans," Jeanne Bone said, tears tracing down her cheeks.

Phoney heard their words as if from a great distance. The sound of rushing water grew in his ears until it was all. Was the river flooding? No, the sound was in his mind.

An idea flashed in the darkness. It stood before Phoney's vision as if emblazoned in neon. It was nothing he would have thought of by himself, but as he saw it hovering there, he knew he would go through with it.

He stood tall and gave a small smile. "Fone Bone is not dead," he whispered. His voice was barely audible, but still it carried.

The bones gasped.

"Fone Bone is not dead!" Phoney shouted. "The humans did not kill him. They bewitched him. You all know my cousin. You all know the books he read--human books."

Murmurs. Nods. Yes, they knew. Yes, it all made sense now.

"He swore a solemn oath," Phoney said, voice choking. "He swore a solemn oath to come back with us, but he would not. He loved humanity more than bones." He looked each of them in the eye again. "But we can save him if you come with me."

"To the Human Valley?" someone gasped.

Phoney Bone nodded. Yes. To the Human Valley.

Fear. Shrinking. Holding back. Phoney could not ask this much of the bones, even when he had them in his clutches. It would take a true leader to bring them together, to bring them to this.

Head and shoulders above his fellow bones, wild hair waving like the aura of some otherworldly demon, the barber Floyd Bone strode forward. Bones stepped aside in awe as the venerable hairdresser, eleventh in a long line of venerable hairdressers, walked with ponderous, plodding steps until he stood beside Phoney Bone on the bank of the Rolling Bone River. He turned his terrible, bright eyes on the townspeople. When he spoke, his deep voice rumbled and blended with the rushing water, and it carried their hearts as if they were all floating together downstream.

"My pappy always said," Floyd Bone intoned, and the bones leaned forward to hear, "my pappy always said, the only good human is a dead human."

The bones clapped. They stomped. They cheered. The voice of wisdom had spoken. They organized. They chose leaders. They made plans. Gofers rushed off to begin the stockpiles necessary for the long journey.

Why am I doing this? Phoney asked himself, but the question did not linger long.

Smiley sat by the riverbank and wept. Phoney placed his hands on Smiley's shoulders.

"Y-you'll start a war," Smiley whispered.

"Sssshhhhh," Phoney said. "No one will get hurt. The talk of dead humans--it's only to get them across the desert. When we're in the Valley again, we'll find Fone Bone. With an army of bones behind us, we'll make him come back."

"But Phoney--"

"Sssshhhhh. Don't you want to see Fone? Don't you want us to be together again?"

Smiley's shoulders trembled under Phoney's palms. "Yes," Smiley whispered.

"No one will get hurt," Phoney said. "We'll just get Fone Bone, that's all. And we'll be a family again." He kissed the top of Smiley's head, just as he used to when they were children. Smiley always liked that; he would close his eyes and pretend he had a mother.

"Who takes care of you?" Phoney whispered. "Who watches out for you?"

Smiley wiped at his face. "Y-you always have, Phoney Bone."

"And I always will," said Phoney.

88888

Tarsil's tower had a small, enclosed courtyard. The smell of freshly clipped grass rose to the high porch on which Fone Bone sat. He wrote lines on the paper before him and then angrily crossed them out.

He stopped writing love poetry when he and Smiley returned from the Eastern Mountains. After they wandered in the cold, rainy forest, Thorn appeared and saved them from a band of marauding rat creatures. Fone Bone was so relieved that he leapt at her, and they hugged each other and told each other how happy they were to be together again. Only later, when Bone reflected on that moment, did he realize it was the first time he had touched her, really touched her. Thorn had often touched him, holding his hand or hugging him, but he had never before dared display his own affection. After that, he hadn't felt the need to write poetry.

But the need was back.

As Thorn's duties--and Fone Bone's own--grew numerous and wearisome, the pair saw less of each other in private. As Bone's private life languished, his public life became more difficult. Bone had the task of upbraiding the Veni-yan general for the embarrassing affair with the assassin Erasmus. Since that time, Thorn traveled everywhere with a hand-selected Veni-yan guard, and an inquiry was underway to root out sedition in the military--and Fone Bone headed the inquiry. He discovered that, while loyalty to Tarsil himself was forgotten, bigotry against dragons and other non-humans ran deep. As Bone monitored the gossip among the soldiers and aristocrats, he heard more and more disturbing rumors and whispered accusations about himself:

"Who does that pale little thing think he is, lording over us?"

"Maybe Erasmus was right--humans should be ruled by humans."

"She always asks his advice. He overrules her wisest advisors."

"Now he's searching for spies, I hear, and he's incompetent."

"He has no experience."

"Neither does she."

"I hear the bone sleeps in the queen's bedchamber."

"I hear the bone does more than that in the queen's bedchamber."

"It's obvious from the way they look at each other that something's going on."

"That's sick."

"Why doesn't the queen mother put a stop to it?"

"What could she do?"

"Why doesn't Queen Thorn take a husband?"

Husband.

Husband.

Bone's pencil snapped, jarring him back to the present. He realized he'd been gouging it into the paper. He looked down at what he had written:

Hair not quite the color of corn,

My dearest darling, my Thorn.

More comfortable in my arms than old clothes I've worn,

My dearest darling, my Thorn.

I really wish I weren't so forlorn,

Dearest, dearest, dearest Thorn.

"Drat," Fone Bone mumbled. "Not much rhymes with 'Thorn.'"

He looked out into the sun-drenched courtyard. Queen Thorn herself, wearing her royal regalia, was strolling across the grass. She had her back to him, and he was surprised to see that her hair was down, for she normally wore it up when formally dressed. Unbidden, the words of Dryden's Virgil surfaced in his memory:

Thus having said, she turn'd and made appear

Her neck refulgent and dishevell'd hair,

Which, flowing from her shoulders, reach'd the ground,

And widely spread ambrosial scents around.

In length of train descends her sweeping gown:

And, by her graceful walk, the queen of love is known.

That was good. He moved to write it down and realized his pencil was broken. He grabbed a knife and whittled the point, mumbling the words to himself over and over. As he whittled, the words in his mind seemed to liquefy and run until he lost them. The tip was sharp, but as he placed it to the paper, he tried in vain to utter the lines. "Refulgent," he muttered. "Refulgent...darn."

How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman.

Fone Bone was immersed in the literature of humanity.

Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies.

Over many years now, the image had grown firm in his mind, born of his reading. The paragon of femininity and beauty must be human.

Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins.

Yearning ran over him like a flood. Page upon page of Arthurian romance, classical poetry, and great drama had come together in his mind to form one image, one type (one Platonic Form, Bone thought, his reading mocking him as he considered)--the Woman, the perfect Woman. No bone female could compare to the goddess in his head.

This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes.

This private goddess had been just that--private--until he saw Thorn. No, she wasn't an exact match, especially after she put on so much muscle and lost so much weight, but she was very close. Very, very close.

How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!

He threw down the pencil in frustration and grabbed up the paper, crumpling it. The words faded from his mind as quickly as they came. He couldn't even plagiarize good poetry.

He looked into the courtyard again. So focused had he been on Thorn that he hadn't noticed the others with her. Veni-yan guards flanked her, as always, but she was meeting a gentleman with a heavy beard tied at the end in the manner of the Pawans. He was dressed in decorative armor and held a tall helmet under his arm.

"Strange," Fone Bone muttered, "to receive a Pawan ambassador so informally."

The Pawan knelt and kissed Thorn's hand. Then, delicately holding her fingertips, he walked with her around the courtyard as the Veni-yan followed at a respectful distance. Thorn and the Pawan smiled at each other and seemed to be holding a conversation, though Bone couldn't hear what they said.

"Why doesn't Queen Thorn take a husband?"

He didn't realize he was again holding what was left of his pencil until he again snapped it. He looked down at the two small, useless nubs in his hands and threw them away in disgust.

It was clear what was going on. The Pawan soldier, whoever he was, was a suitor. She was...she was dating.

She was dating someone else.

And she hadn't even told him.

He didn't feel any satisfaction that it wasn't Tom. He wanted to run into the courtyard, barge between them, and drill the guy: "Who are you?" "Where are you from?" "How old are you?" "Can you look me in the eye?" "Are you polite to women?" "And be sure you have her home by ten o'clock sharp!"

Instead, he clenched the edge of the table as his frustration boiled up and gelled into despair. He felt tears moving toward his eyes, so he headed them off.

Drat! He should have known! She's a queen. She has to get married. There have to be future queens! And he should have known it would make him jealous. He should have prepared. He should have...he should have...

He should have left.

His fingers slid off the table and into his lap. He looked again out the window at Thorn and the soldier. They had stopped by the flowerbed, where the man was picking her some violets.

A memory interposed in Bone's vision and it was as if he were there again, stepping out of the forest onto the fairground. The underside of his right arm from pit to fingertips was coated with thick honey, which was also running down his leg as he lugged the enormous honeycomb out of the woods, only to see Thorn and Tom seated together--alone--behind a clump of trees, talking pleasantly. He saw Tom lean toward her, and then Bone couldn't watch anymore. He stumbled back into the woods, losing the hard-won honeycomb somewhere along the way.

Fone Bone didn't know who the Pawan soldier was, but at that moment, whoever he was, Fone Bone hated that bastard, and he hated him with a passion.

88888

Sometime later, Thorn swept onto the porch, cheeks lightly flushed. She saw Bone and sat across from him.

"Hey, Fone Bone," she said.

"Who was that?" Fone Bone asked, sounding grumpier than he meant to sound.

"My, aren't we pleasant today," Thorn replied, but she was still grinning. "That was General Thintook of Pawa. Gran'ma's sort of hoping we'll marry to cement the new alliance."

"What do you think of him?" Fone Bone asked, feeling dreadful.

"Hairy," she answered.

"Is that all?"

"And genteel. Genteel and hairy."

"Seems like you were being awful friendly to him if that's your whole impression."

She knitted her eyebrows and brushed a clump of hair behind her ear. "I was being polite, Fone Bone. You should try it sometime."

He looked down and nodded. "Sorry," he whispered.

Thorn took a deep breath, sucked in her lip for a moment, and said, "Fone Bone?"

"Yes, Thorn?"

"Are you as stressed out as I am?"

He nodded.

She placed a hand on his. It did not have the effect she wanted. He wasn't comforted or reassured. He was both aroused and irritated, and he squirmed on his chair as he stared at her delicate fingers resting on his thick, clumsy digits.

"Take a walk with me, Prime Minister," Thorn said. "Let's take a short break." She whistled between her teeth. "Guards!"

88888

Atheia's acropolis rang with the sound of hammers. Quarries had been opened, labor crews hired, and the new palace begun. As Thorn wanted, it would be modest. As Gran'ma wanted, it could be expanded later. Thorn and Bone walked about the worksite, observing the laborers as they hauled limestone blocks, gave the finishing touches with chisels, and moved them into place with ropes, ramps, and muscle.

Fone Bone broke into a sweat when he realized he had left his love poem, crumpled, on the table by the window where anyone could pick it up. So distracted was he by this thought that he could hardly keep his eyes on his surroundings, let alone enjoy his time with Thorn, so they were already walking toward Tom before Fone Bone had time to realize where they were going and steer Thorn in a different direction. When Bone saw his old rival, his mood got worse.

"There he is," Fone Bone whispered through gritted teeth so Thorn couldn't hear, "the shirtless wonder."

Tom, indeed shirtless, was hauling a block up a ramp, assisted by five other men. He had joined the labor crew when heralds announced the reconstruction of the palace. As it turned out, he was not only a honey-gatherer but a jack-of-all-trades with more than a little experience in manual labor, and he even boasted some skill at carpentry. After securing the stone, he ran down to greet the queen and prime minister. His tight muscles rippled under his tawny skin as he doffed his ratty, nearly shapeless hat.

"Your Highness," he said, "and Prime Minister. What an honor it is to see you." He gave an additional, nervous nod to the four Veni-yan who stood behind.

"Rrrrr," growled Fone Bone.

"Hello, Tom," Thorn said, curtsying. She was new to the curtsy but was practicing. "Are you terribly busy? Perhaps you would like to take a brief respite and show your queen and minister the progress on the construction?"

"I'd be honored, milady," Tom answered, bowing deeply and laying it on thick.

One of the Veni-yan accosted Tom and patted him down. After the guard nodded to the queen and returned to his place, Tom began strutting and gesticulating grandly while Thorn and Bone walked alongside.

"I've seen all the plans," Tom said as he waved a hand. "I even revised some of them. Limestone façade with a rubble fill simply wouldn't do. Mudbrick, that's the ticket. Not rubble. The structure will be much more sound this way. I argued with the chief architect until he relented."

"I've seen and approved the new plans," Thorn said.

"I argued with the chief architect," Bone mimicked under his breath.

"Tho...er, Your Majesty," Tom said, turning to her and taking her hand.

He didn't quite finish his sentence because one of the Veni-yan snatched his hand away. When Thorn gave the guard a private signal, the guard stepped back.

"Sorry," Tom said, shocked.

"Don't worry about it," Thorn answered. "What were you going to say?"

He scratched at the back of his neck. "Well...I know this is a bit forward, but...I'm really sorry about that whole thing with Jasmine. I don't know what I was thinking."

"It's all right, Tom," Thorn said.

"Is it? I mean..." He looked down, appearing guilty. "You were so beautiful that day at the fair. I just...I just felt I...didn't deserve you." He glanced up and a small tear was glistening in the corner of one eye.

Thorn placed a hand to her heart, taken aback. Fone Bone placed a hand to his forehead, feeling a headache coming on. Jeez, this guy is something else, he thought.

"Oh, Tom, I...I don't know what to say," Thorn gasped.

Tom raised a finger to his lips. "Don't say anything now, my queen," he whispered. "But," and he looked down again, bashfully, "it's not...unusual, I hear, for the Harvestars to court commoners."

"We sort of have to," Thorn answered, raising an eyebrow, "since we're the only royalty in the vicinity."

Fone Bone's heart slammed slowly and steadily against the inside of his chest. He was dizzy.

"Would you consider...?" Tom asked.

"I will consider," Thorn answered.

Bone's pounding heart burst.

88888

They made their way back through Queen's Square to reach the tower, and people bowed and saluted as they went by. The guards kept the people at a distance, but no one was likely to approach the queen; they had seen what she could do to a potential assassin.

As Fone Bone eyed the crowd, he noticed several dark glares, and they were aimed at him.

To Bone's embarrassment, Thorn stopped by Taneal's collection of shrines. Since the outer town had burned, Taneal had moved to Queen's Square where she ran a prestigious operation. The largest of her sculptures depicted Bone and Bartleby, and Bone winced whenever he saw it.

"She made my nose so huge," he whispered.

Taneal, sitting beside the shrine, grinned. "Your Highness," she said, "and Mister Bone."

"Hello, Taneal," Thorn answered. "How did you enjoy those sweetmeats I brought you from the north?"

"They were quite good," Taneal said, "though I'm afraid most of them ended up in the stomach of my brother."

Her brother Adrian poked his head out from behind the Bone statue. "They were excellent." He belched.

Thorn grinned.

Taneal looked at Fone Bone. She smiled, but her eyes fogged and her gaze grew distant. Then her body went rigid and her eyes rolled into her head.

"Taneal!" Bone shouted. He ran to her, but Adrian jumped out from behind the sculpture and pushed him away.

"Don't touch her!" Adrian warned. "It's one of her fits."

"Fits?" Thorn asked, kneeling beside Taneal with worry on her face.

"She's all right," Adrian said. "Ever since the death of the Locust, she's had the fits from time to time."

"What sort of fits?" Fone Bone asked.

Adrian gave him a small, mysterious smile. "She prophesies," he said.

Behind Thorn and Fone Bone, the Veni-yan guards exchanged glances through their hoods.

Taneal sat upright, her back painfully straight. Her pupils dilated, her eyes bulged, and her teeth clenched as the muscles in her cheeks twitched. She shuddered and raised one finger, pointing it around the square. People stopped to gawk and a crowd assembled.

Taneal's finger settled on Fone Bone. "You," Taneal said in a loud voice.

"Me?" Bone asked.

Taneal snarled like an animal and shrieked, "Oath breaker! Oath breaker! Your doom is pronounced and its fulfillment is coming!" Her eyes rolled into her head again and she gurgled as she went limp.

"Ohmygosh! She's choking!" Bone cried.

"Taneal!" Adrian gasped. He grabbed his sister and held her. Her head lolled back over his shoulder as painful, wet retching noises rose from her throat.

"Heimlich!" Bone shouted. He grabbed Taneal away from the startled Adrian and rammed his fists under her ribcage.

"Fone Bone!" Thorn admonished. "What are you doing?"

Taneal coughed and fell forward out of Fone Bone's grasp. She vomited water onto the cobbles, fell on her face, and rolled over. Her eyes were still glazed, but she was breathing. She coughed several times and then rasped in a tortured voice barely above a whisper--

"Evil is upon us and it will not delay:

The one who bears the star shall bear the star away.

Two shall do that which nature would despise,

And out from the unnatural a new Locust will arise.

The seal is set and the doom is now spoken,

And avenged shall be two promises broken."

"And they say my poetry's bad," Bone said.

Thorn touched Taneal's head. "Taneal, can you hear me?" she asked.

"Th-Thorn?" Taneal said as her eyes returned to normal. "I...I mean, Your Highness."

"It's all right, Taneal. Can you sit up?" Thorn helped the girl upright. Taneal was weak in the knees, so they set her down next to her shrines.

Adrian took her into his arms. He looked at Fone Bone and said, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Bone answered. He looked up to see the people crowding in close. The dark glares he had noticed earlier were now darker. Bone waved at them. "All right, all right!" he shouted. "Break it up!"

The crowd dispersed. The Veni-yan gathered around Thorn and Fone Bone and hustled them back to the tower. Once there, Thorn dismissed the guards, grabbed Bone's hand, hauled him to her room, and shut the door.

Thorn paced, alternately tugging and biting her lower lip. "Jeez, Fone Bone," she said.

"Yeah," he answered. "Jeez."

They looked at each other in silence.

"Did you pick that up from me or what?" Bone asked.

Thorn looked confused. "Pick up what?"

"Jeez."

Thorn blinked a few times, put a hand over her mouth, and laughed. "Oh! I think I must have." The humor faded from her eyes and she knelt next to Fone Bone.

"So what are we going to do?" she asked.

"I dunno," Bone answered, scowling. "I guess you could tell Tom you're dating this Thintook guy."

Thorn raised an eyebrow. "I...meant about Taneal's prophecy."

Fone Bone felt red flushing into his cheeks.

"You're blushing," Thorn said.

"So?" Fone Bone said, taking a few steps back. "Can't a guy blush if he's of a mind to?"

Thorn looked simultaneously sympathetic and as if she was trying to suppress a smile. Bone didn't like that look. Thorn sat next to him on the floor and put an arm around his shoulders. For a few moments, neither spoke.

"What promises have you broken?" Thorn asked.

Bone shrugged. "I dunno. What's it matter? It's probably nothing. She's...she's epileptic or something."

"What?"

"You know. Seizures."

"Seizures that make you prophesy?"

Bone shrugged again. "I don't know. I promised Phoney I'd go back to Boneville, I guess. But she said two promises. I haven't made two promises, not that I can remember. But I mean, all that stuff about a new Locust and the one who bears the star--that's what the Hooded One called Phoney, but Phoney's back in Boneville. It's nothing."

Thorn tugged at her lip. "Mmm. Maybe you're right. Still...I think we should keep it in mind. We need to be careful."

Fone Bone scrunched his mouth. "Yeah," he said. "Jeez, Locust. I don't wanna hear anything more about the Lord of the Locusts. I've had enough of him."

"Yeah," Thorn whispered, her mind far away. "Growing up...I always figured I'd marry Jonathan."

Fone Bone's stomach churned. "Jon Oaks?" he asked.

"Yeah. I mean, he was about the only guy my age around Barrelhaven. We sort of grew up together after Gran'ma brought me there. Lucius took Jon under his wing, and Lucius and Gran'ma saw a lot of each other. Jon and I played together as kids. We could both talk to animals. It was our special thing. I guess it wasn't that special, since Gran'ma and Lucius could do it, but they didn't do it much. It was like the four of us were special that way. I guess that means Jon was a gifted dreamer." Thorn pushed some of her voluminous hair behind her ear.

"I guess he must have been," Bone whispered.

"I guess it means you're a gifted dreamer, Fone Bone."

"Huh?" Bone asked. "Oh, all bones can talk to animals. That's no big deal."

"Still," Thorn said, "when I found out you could do it, I thought you were really special."

"Thanks, Thorn," Bone said, looking away. When he looked in her face again, he was surprised to see she was crying.

"Thorn?"

"Jonathan," she said, wiping her face with her sleeve. "And Mr. Down. And everybody." She tried in vain to dry her eyes with the back of her hand. "It's all over, but it isn't. Do you ever feel it, Fone Bone? Do you ever just feel the weight of the war and all the dead and everything bad that happened?"

"A little, sometimes," Fone Bone lied. He put his hand on her back and she leaned against him. It was uncomfortable, since he was so much shorter than she, but neither complained.

"Jonathan and I...drifted apart as we grew older," Thorn said. "I think he spoke less to the animals as he grew up. I'm pretty sure he never met Ted."

This was not going at all how Fone Bone wanted. He wanted to talk about the situation now. He wanted to get rid of Thintook and he wanted to get rid of that jerk Tom and he wanted Thorn to himself. He wanted to tell Thorn how he really felt and tell her plain instead of letting it out in little hints. He wanted to admit to Thorn that now that the Dragon wasn't invading his dreams, all he dreamed about was her.

Fone Bone was brave enough to face rat creature armies, but he wasn't brave enough for that.

"I wonder if Thintook and I could get along," Thorn mused.

"Jeez, Thorn," Fone Bone said, his eyebrows connected together in a glower, "ya don't have to marry Thintook. You're th' queen, fer cryin' out loud."

Thorn let go of Bone and edged away. "Don't get upset, Fone Bone. I just said I wondered if we'd get along. What is it with you?"

"What is what with me?" Bone demanded. "What is it with you?"

Thorn rose to her knees and glared at him. "Me?"

"Yes, you."

"Me?"

"You! Hand-holding, touching, bathing for cripes' sake, and then you run off after the first muscle-bound moron you spot at a fair."

"Excuse me?"

"In fact," Bone continued, too mad to stop in spite of his better judgment, "you ditched me just so you could run back and pick Tom up, didn't you? You used our fight as an excuse to ditch me!"

Unbelief filled Thorn's face. "Fone Bone! What brought this up? I...I..." She breathed hard and looked away from him.

Fone Bone crossed his arms, waiting.

"Stars," Thorn muttered. "Yes, alright?"

Bone uncrossed his arms, but he didn't look any happier.

Thorn sighed. "You know, Fone Bone, if you hadn't picked that fight, the three of us could've walked around the fair together."

"Jeez, Thorn, he didn't wanna walk around with me. He told you to lose me so he could brag about his tree-climbing, and that was before I started talking back."

"He didn't say that," Thorn argued.

"I remember th' whole conversation, Thorn. And while he spent the next day in your arms or whatever, I spent it outrunning the stupid rat creatures!"

Thorn straightened her back and crossed her own arms. "Bone! I gave him one little hug goodnight, okay? And the next day he was in some other girl's arms, not mine! I spent the day of the Cow Race looking for you because I was worried sick!"

Bone perked up. "Really?"

"Yes!"

"Then how come you're so nice to him?" Bone asked.

"How come I'm so nice to you when you're acting like a world-class jerk, Fone Bone? Maybe I don't hold grudges or get jealous every chance I get!"

"Ha! Who hid in a tree for a week to avoid her grandmother?"

"Oh, Fone Bone, you're impossible!"

They turned their backs on each other and fumed.

After a few long, silent minutes, Thorn turned around and hugged him. "Oh, Fone Bone! This is silly. Why are we fighting? I can't stay mad at you!"

He returned her hug and they held each other. Then Fone Bone asked sheepishly, "Thorn...how come you never call me Fone?"

"What?"

"It's always Fone Bone or Bone. How come you don't call me Fone?"

"Was I s'posed to?"

"It's what my friends call me. 'Bone' isn't my name."

She held him out and looked in his face. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize...Fone."

When she said his name, his anger drained away and he felt tired, but also peaceful. He tested his heart and realized, for just this moment, he was brave enough.

Heart pounding, he spoke. "Thorn," he said, "I have to tell you something. I...I love you."

Their eyes met. As Bone watched, Thorn's lower lip trembled. Then her mouth opened, and--

She laughed in his face.

Thorn clapped her hands over her mouth, but the damage was done. She stood and backed away from him, horrified at her own reaction, as Fone Bone, heart terribly bruised, ran from the room with tears streaming down his face.

"I'm sorry, Fone Bone," Thorn choked. "I didn't mean it!"

The door slammed and Fone Bone was gone.

Thorn threw herself on her bed and cried.

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Wiping his eyes with his wrist so he could see, Fone Bone sprinted back to his own chamber. He dug out his musty knapsack and crammed his papers and his old blanket into it. He wanted as far away from this Valley as he could get. There were many times he felt he didn't belong here, but he never felt it as strongly as now. His loneliness had grown into a monster hunting him, fiercer than any rat creature. At last, it had caught him and was now sitting on his chest, heavier and more oppressive than Tarsil's dark and drafty tower.

He dug through the room until he found his well-worn copy of Moby Dick. As he looked at the frayed cover, his vision blurred, and he collapsed, hugging the book to his chest while he sat on the floor and sobbed.

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Thorn cried from time to time, but she never cried for long. The tears dried and the light outside her window faded as the sun set over the western mountains. She lay facedown on her bed, idly kicking her foot and watching the room grow dim as she thought back to how she had treated Fone Bone, and she realized how this might have happened. She had, at every opportunity, hugged him or touched him. It seemed natural to her; they were friends, and in addition to that, she was curious about him. She wondered at the way those two lines floated off his head or pulled tight over his eyes or disappeared altogether depending on his mood. She wondered at his simple body and its large, bulbous feet with no toes, or its melon-like nose with no nostrils. How did he smell or hear or do a hundred other things? When she touched him, his white skin was soft and smooth without hairs, moles, scars, or even pores. When she hugged him, he smelled sweet like cinnamon and peppermint. She could feel firm yet pliable muscle--or some sort of tissue--just under the surface of his remarkable flesh, yet it seemed he had no bones (ironically) except at his knees and elbows. She caught a glimpse of the elasticity of his structure when her stolen apple pie jutted from his face or when he flexed his bicep and inflated his arm until it was thicker than his head. She had no doubt that if she grabbed that arm and pulled hard it would stretch with little more resistance than warm taffy.

She touched and she hugged, but what she really wanted to do was poke, pry, or even knead at his hapless body until she had satisfied her curiosity. She had sent the wrong signals. He was thinking love while she was thinking vivisection.

And to her shame, she realized she had known all along how he felt. It was obvious in the way he looked at her. It was clear in the terrible love poem he gave Gran'ma by accident--the poem Thorn had decided to assume was for a girl back in Boneville. It was clear as could be when Fone Bone slipped and called her "my girl" while defying the Hooded One. Even then, when she could no longer pretend she didn't know, she ignored it, and she hadn't distanced herself from him, and she knew why.

She liked having him in love with her. It made her feel good, even powerful, to be the object of unreciprocated love. And maybe, just maybe, somewhere deep inside, she felt something...

No. Not that.

Guilt burned in her chest. She raised herself from the bed and wiped her face.

88888

In time, Fone Bone cried himself out. He was still sitting there, holding the book, numb all over, when a timid knock came at the door, and Thorn's voice drifted in after it. "Fone?"

He tried to wipe the dried salt off his face, to no avail. When he spoke, his voice sounded nasal and clogged. "Yes?"

She opened the door a little and peeked in. Her own face was flushed and dried tears were glazed on her cheeks. She slipped in and closed the door behind her.

She knelt beside him. "Fone?"

He stopped hugging the book. "It's--it's okay, Thorn. Don't worry about it. I mean, I understand and all." He looked in her face and his eyes filled again. "You're a beautiful woman," he said. His tears dropped onto Moby Dick as he looked down and forced the book into the overfull pack. "And I'm just a bone."

She touched his head, running her fingers along his smooth scalp. He shuddered. He stopped packing and his shoulders drooped. "Why did you ask me to stay, Thorn?"

"Because you're my friend, Fone."

"Is that all?"

She closed her eyes and bit her lip. She was afraid to lose him, afraid to rule the kingdom without him. She relied on him. They had been through so much together, and she didn't know if she could do it alone.

Fear overrode guilt.

She reached out to him. "Come here, Fone Bone." She wrapped him in her arms and drew him close. She was still pretending, still toying with him to keep him by her side, and she knew it. But she couldn't lose him. Not now.

Fone Bone didn't resist. So many affectionate hugs and caresses, and he had read into all of them more than was there, but even now that he knew they were empty, he still didn't resist. Frustration coursed anew in his blood. His skin felt hot, itchy, and tight all over.

Thorn's heart pounded against his head as they held each other. Her mind had reached a decision and she was steeling herself to go through with it. She knew it was foolish, but she also knew she couldn't lose him.

She pushed a hand against his forehead to tip his head back, and she kissed him.

It was awkward. Even when Thorn was kneeling, Fone Bone was shorter than she was. His nose was in the way and his mouth was difficult to find since it was tucked under his nose and could disappear completely when he wasn't speaking. But after a few false starts, they managed to work it out.

Fone Bone knew it was wrong. He knew he should stop her. He knew it was meaningless. He knew they were using each other.

But he didn't stop.

Fone Bone tangled his fingers in Thorn's thick, auburn tresses. Since he had first seen her, he had longed to run his hands through her hair. Now he did so with abandon as his tongue explored her mouth. The world outside faded. The room faded. Time faded. Everything disappeared except this moment, this kiss. A hard nail driven into the universe; everything before and after it changed.

Bone's neck was craned and he tried to readjust. When he did, his teeth clacked against hers. The last two shards of the destroyed Crown of Horns, one in each of their mouths, struck against one another. As the Crown attracted and neutralized the Locust, so its fragments tried to repel each other. But though their mouths went numb for a moment from the contact, the repelling force of their teeth was too weak to stop the fateful kiss.

As Fone Bone and Thorn gave way to lust and fear, in the distant Eastern Mountains, the carcass of a dead locust twitched its legs and fluttered its wings.

Gran'ma Ben, alone in her room, tumbled out of bed. She was dizzy, weak, and sick. She gasped aloud to the blank walls, "The Gitchy Feelin'! It's never been so bad!"

At the same time, miles away in Boneville, Floyd Bone spoke these fateful words: "The only good human is a dead human."

And Taneal, on her straw beside her brother in their dingy one-room hut, opened unseeing eyes and said in an eerie voice, "It has begun." Adrian, lying still in the dark, heard her and his heart filled with ice.

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Fone Bone sat on the edge of his bed and watched the steady rise and fall of Thorn's shoulder and back as she slept. After the kissing had exhausted itself, they had held each other so they wouldn't have to talk, and Thorn eventually drifted off to sleep.

Fone Bone was wide awake.

He slipped out and walked onto the balcony. It was a clear night and warm, and the stars overhead faded in and out as high, icy clouds moved over them.

Fone Bone took a long, deep breath.

"Hello, Bone."

Bone jumped. The Great Red Dragon was clinging to the tower wall next to his balcony.

"Sorry," the Dragon said.

Bone grabbed his heart. "Jeez, don't do that." He calmed and admired the Dragon's position. "I didn't know you could stand on walls."

"Oh, sure," the Dragon said. "It's a dragon thing, clinging to towers."

"You got a smoke on ya?" Bone asked.

"You don't smoke."

"I could use one now."

The Dragon produced two cigarettes. One he stuck in his own mouth and the other he gave to Bone. They both lit up.

Bone coughed. Oh man, that stuff was awful, and it tasted like something suspiciously different from tobacco.

"So, what's up?" the Dragon asked.

"Huh?" Fone Bone said, startled. "Oh, nothin'. Nothin'. Just wanted a smoke, that's all."

"Uh huh," the Dragon said, sounding suspicious.

But Fone Bone wasn't talking. Instead, he leaned against the rail and looked out over the blackness of Atheia. The only lights were the stars, the moon, and the watchers' fires on the walls. The tip of Bone's cigarette shone crimson and then faded as he inhaled, exhaled. His fantasies had come true, but not in the way he had wanted. He knew she didn't feel for him what he felt. Yet he was powerless. He couldn't tell her no. Instead, he wanted to wake her up and kiss her again.

He stubbed out the cigarette. He looked over to the Dragon, but the Dragon had gone. Bone crept back into his room and lay down beside Thorn, gazing at the back of her head until he drifted into sleep.

It would be his last easy night.

**Next: Birth**


	4. Birth

The Chronicles of Fone Bone Oathbreaker

D. G. D. Davidson

BONE is © 2006 by Jeff Smith.

**Chapter 4**

_Prologue: Faerie Dream_

Thorn Harvestar, Veni-yan-cari, Awakened One, watchful even while sleeping, moved through dark, shadowed, and fearful dreams. As horrific shapes flitted through her mind, faded, and appeared again, these words arose before her, and they etched into her heart the artful lines of beginning terror:

_Tho turning all his pride to humblesse meeke,  
Him selfe before her feete he lowly threw,  
And gan for grace and loue of her to seeke:  
Which she accepting, he so neare her drew,  
That of his game she soone enwombed grew,  
And forth did bring a Lion of great might;  
That shortly did all other beasts subdew.  
With that she waked, full of fearefull fright,  
And doubtfully dismayd through that so vncouth sight._

She would never know that the words floated out of Fone Bone's mind to hers as with her Dreaming power she wandered through his sleep. He read them at midnight many years ago when, wearied with study, he bent over one of his esoteric tomes and traced the letters with his finger as he mouthed their strange sounds. They struck his fancy then, though he did not know their import. But Thorn in her wisdom read them with fear, though she would not remember them on waking, for these words had an edge of certainty that comes with prophecy, and it was too late already to thwart their fulfillment...

**Birth**

The night they threw Rictus in the river, the bones prolonged their revelry by making a bonfire of Fone Bone's books.

The heap of texts was not very large, so in the middle of the street, they piled logs and kindling and twigs, lit them, and stoked the blaze. As the fire licked the dry air, they tossed in the moldy paperbacks and heavy, leather-bound tomes. As each work struck the pyre, the sparks gushed upward and lit the bones' gleeful faces; each flash reflected orange in their dark, wet eyes.

Dante roasted in the inferno. Descartes cooked in his own juices. Lord Byron, lying on Goethe, jumped too high and expired in flame. Suetonius, Eusebius, and Herodotus together became an ash heap of history. The bell tolled for John Donne. The scriptures and several Church Fathers smoldered together. Homer burned like Troy. Into the fire went the likes of Emerson, Longfellow, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Whitman, and Browning.

Like Mephistopheles ascending from Hell, an enormous specter reared over the flames. The fire illuminated its underside with a sickly purple, above which great red orbs flashed in the darkness. Raised high above its intimidating bulk was a stark shadow that bore a fearful, flashing beacon. The bones gasped, but then clapped in glee as the phantom took on certain shape.

It was Phoney Bone. He had looped a bridle into Bartleby's mouth and rode in triumph on his back. Bartleby bore the humiliation with shame and patience.

Phoney shouted out to all the bones, "Th' rat is tamed! I have broken his will!" The bones answered with more claps and more cheers.

The flash in Phoney's upraised hand was fire reflected from a large, sharp knife. The Bone cousins owned two relics of their famous ancestor--one was Smiley's beloved banjo, and the other was the knife in Phoney's hand, the sole weapon Big Johnson carried whenever he ventured into the wild, the blade known as Piecemaker.

Phoney planted the knife in the sheath on his hip, reached behind himself, and brought forth another prize, the one he had barely rescued from the bones as they looted his library.

It was Fone Bone's other copy of Moby Dick, the one he didn't bring on trips. This book was large and heavy with a sculpted leather cover, silk bookmark, and gold-gilt pages. Inside, accompanying the big, luxurious type, were finely detailed woodcut illustrations. It was the pride of Fone Bone's collection.

Phoney held the book high for all the bones to see. He opened it to the middle and, kicking Bartleby in the side, rode around the fire, parading the book.

He let it drop facedown into the flames. Even as it fell, the pages blackened and curled. The leather popped and cracked. The book struck the heap with a heavy thud, sending bright embers upward in a whirlwind of dying flame. The soot from the disturbed bonfire settled on the bones' skin and burned holes in their clothes. Ashes were in their mouths.

"We are cleansed," Phoney announced. "We are cleansed of human filth. This night, we return again to the path of righteousness!"

His voice drowned in the roar. Oh, how he loved the approbation of the mob. This was his meat and drink.

88888

Rictus Bone washed off most of the tar. It wasn't easy, but he managed it. Naked and wet, he crawled from the river and tried in vain to shake off the cold water. He heard the celebration and could see the reflected fire flickering against a few of Boneville's skyscrapers. Good. Most of the townsfolk were in one place. It might go ill if Rictus met any of his fellow bones while he was sneaking back into the city.

He jogged through the streets until he reached the mayoral mansion. The jogging made him pant, and he cursed the soft paunch he had built over the last several years.

He had no key anymore, so he broke a window with a brick. Once inside, he ran upstairs to his room and rifled rapidly through the closet. He found his khaki vest, the one with all the pockets, and threw it on. He found a hiking pack with a few supplies in it and shoved it over his shoulders. He threw on a canteen and strapped on a machete. He yanked open a drawer and felt under his shirts, grasping the well-worn ivory handle of his .38 hand-ejector. Rictus drew out the gun and belt and pulled out more shirts until he found the box of bullets. He loaded five slugs in the gun, put the hammer on the empty chamber, and then filled all the rings in the belt and slung it on his hip.

Its weight felt good. Rictus kept the gun clean, but he hadn't had cause to wear it in ages. He went to the closet again for a sun hat and pulled down his brown fedora. He planted the hat on his head and returned to the mirror on the dresser.

Yes, he looked good. A bit fat, certainly, but he still cut a jaunty figure. He tried cocking the hat a bit--yes, even better.

He slapped himself. "Idiot," he said aloud. "Stupid old sot. Ridiculous fop! Get a hold of yourself."

He ran down to the kitchen. A box of matches, a stash of MREs, a few cakes of dried dingleberries. He filled the canteen in the sink. Now it was time to go.

He wanted a cigarette. He searched his pockets for a pack.

No, no, no! No cigarettes! Time to quit overeating and time to quit smoking! What's happened to me in the last forty-five years?

Through the living room and into the hall. Ready, adventure! Rictus flung open the front door and was startled to find a figure standing there, hands on hips as if waiting.

"Annie Bone?" Rictus asked. "What are you doing here?" Another glance answered his question. She was wearing a sunbonnet, knapsack, windbreaker, canvas skirt, and a rather ridiculous pair of suede hiking shoes.

Annie looked up. Even with the lights off, Rictus could make out her face. She was a young thing and pleasant looking enough, though her eyes looked gigantic because of the thick-lensed, horn-rimmed glasses she wore. Her brown hair was done up in a bun held together by a pencil.

"I'm coming with you," she said.

"Like hell," Rictus answered.

"Watch your language, Mister Mayor, and I'll brook no argument."

"You'll brook your butt back home, is what you'll do," Rictus said. "And that's ex-mayor. Why does a nice girl like you want to wander the wilds with an old man?"

She took a step through the doorway and leaned on the frame. "You're going south to Portsmouth, and I want to come."

"What makes you think I'm going south to Portsmouth? I could be going north to Craponia or west to the Valley of the Full-Figured Gals, or--"

"The humans like you, Rictus. You have friends in Portsmouth and you'll be going there to mount an expedition."

"You're talking nonsense, Annie."

"You heard everything said by the riverbank, and you're going to put together a band of humans to stop Phoney Bone from invading this valley across the desert."

Rictus stared at her. "When you trained for that teaching certificate, did you take a class on clairvoyance?"

"A few on common sense," Annie replied. "I know you, Rictus. I voted for you three times."

"Well." Rictus chuckled with closed lips. "It is hard to argue with that. But why in the world do you want to come with me?"

She lowered her gaze. "I'm...worried about Fone Bone."

He grunted. "You and he were friends, weren't you?"

"Something like that."

"You know the trip south is dangerous? We could run into thermites or bone-suckers."

"I know the risks."

"You ever seen a human?"

"Not up close."

He licked his lower lip. "Can you keep up?"

"With an overweight, sixty-five-year-old bone? I think so."

Rictus patted his stomach. "I'll have you know there's still a lot of muscle under here! You should have seen me in my prime, back in the war! But never mind that. You equipped?"

"As prepared as I know how to be."

"It'll have to do. We need to get out before Phoney's little party breaks up."

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The sun was not yet up, but the sky had turned pale orange over the Eastern Mountains. Fone Bone again stood on the balcony of his room. A cool wind tickled his skin.

Lying beside Thorn, he had slept deep and awoken early. As the coming sun renewed the day, so Fone Bone felt a renewal within himself. Though the night before had much of darkness about it, on reflection Fone Bone was at peace. The guilt that had earlier seared his heart was gone. When their lips had touched, he had felt that Thorn was not truly giving herself to him, but now his imagination purified her actions and reestablished her as the Ideal of Woman. She had to be. He had given up too much to find that she was anything else.

He took a deep breath and let it out.

No, he was not at peace. His heart hurt. He was in turmoil. How could she? How could she?

There was an image of a perfect Thorn in Bone's mind, but that Thorn was not Thorn. The retiring, modest, chaste woman did not exist, for she never would have done what Thorn had done.

The image cracked.

Fone Bone's mind floated back to that warm afternoon when he had walked with Thorn to the Hot Springs and they had bathed together. As the memory rose in him, he was angry. He had been disappointed then with her immodesty because it violated his ideal. But he had ignored it, even pretended it didn't happen.

He had struggled to keep his eyes off her, but he hadn't entirely succeeded. Her body had both intrigued and confused him, but most of all his eyes had wandered to her hair and the way it curled, darkened and drenched, against her glistening shoulders. He had longed to reach out and fondle those strands, but he had been too afraid, and along with fear, he felt rage at his own weakness. He was angry that he was too weak to act on his desires, and angry that he had the desires at all.

He clutched the rails of the balustrade and slammed his head against them. No, she's not like that. It isn't like that...

The image cracked, but it did not shatter. Fone Bone steadied his breathing.

The French door behind him slammed open. Fone Bone jumped and turned around.

Gran'ma stood over him. "Fone Bone!"

"Gran'ma? What--?"

"The Gitchy. And a good thing, too." Gran'ma grabbed his arm and dragged him back into the bedroom. Gran'ma pointed to Thorn, who was writhing in pain on the bed. Fone moved to run to her side, but Gran'ma held his arm.

"How long as she been like this?" Gran'ma asked.

"I--I don't know."

"Why is she in your room?"

"Er..."

Gran'ma pointed to the door. "Get the Headmaster. And find Mermie; she's an accomplished midwife."

"A what?"

"Get her, Bone!"

Frantic, Fone Bone ran. The tower was dark, cavern-like, always dank, and lit by a few thin windows and occasional smoky torches. Fone Bone chased his own shifting shadows as he sprinted up and down the stairs shouting, "Headmaster! Mermie! Headmaster!"

They came running. Mermie, calm as always, was still in a dressing gown. "Thorn's sick!" Bone cried. They followed him.

After Fone Bone had herded them to his room, he ran to Thorn's side. He could see now that her abdomen was distended so that it jutted from her body like a globe, and her dress was stretched painfully tight. She was gasping and occasionally crying out. Gran'ma was kneeling beside her, clutching her hand.

The Headmaster looked at Thorn and pulled back his hood. "How could she be pregnant and no one notice?"

"I don't know, Headmaster," Gran'ma said.

"What's wrong with her?" Bone asked, biting the ends of his fingers in panic.

"She's pregnant, Bone," Gran'ma snapped.

Fone Bone tried to think. He was a reader. He knew lots of words. Pregnant, pregnant. That meant full, right? But that made no sense. Words could be pregnant. Silences could be pregnant. People--

"Full of what?" Bone demanded, but nobody paid attention.

"However it happened, it happened," Mermie said. "Fone Bone, why don't you go boil some water?"

"Mermie!" Bone admonished. "This is no time to make tea! Thorn's sick!"

The humans stared at him.

"She's not sick," Mermie said. "She's having a baby."

"A...?" Bone's face was blank.

"But who is the father?" the Headmaster demanded.

From the bed, Thorn grunted, "There...is...no father... This...is impossible!"

A baby? Bone wondered. A baby?

Could it be?

"She couldn't hide this!" Gran'ma yelled.

"...I...didn't...hide..." Thorn panted.

A baby?

"I'm the father," Bone whispered.

"What?" asked Gran'ma, rising from her knees.

"I'm the father," Bone said. "I'm...I'm sorry, Gran'ma. Last night, Thorn and I--we kissed. I'm sorry! It happened so fast--"

"Fone Bone, what tomfoolery are you talking?" Gran'ma demanded.

Always practical, Mermie asked, "Fone Bone, how do bones have children?"

Fone Bone blushed. "Well, the usual way, I guess--"

"Describe it," Mermie insisted.

"Uh...well, usually a couple of bones get married and then, you know, they kiss, and then...then the Stork comes."

Gran'ma crossed her arms. "The Stork? Bone--"

The Headmaster cleared his throat, fumbled with his hood, and paced. "The Stork is a spirit being similar to the Locust. His duty is the perpetuation of life." The Headmaster turned a dark gaze on Fone Bone. "It would not...entirely surprise me if the Stork visited the bones in a direct fashion. It might explain their latent Dreaming powers."

Gran'ma looked back at Thorn. "You mean...?"

The Headmaster wrinkled his copious nose and fiddled with his hood as he glared at Thorn's swollen abdomen. "This child is the product of an unnatural union, a creature of chaos."

"...Unnatural...?" Thorn said through grit teeth.

The Headmaster gazed again at Bone. "I once said that I was uncertain if you had saved or destroyed us, Fone Bone. We may soon learn the answer."

"Aaah!" Thorn cried. Beads of sweat stood out on her forehead.

"She is definitely in labor," Mermie commented. "This baby has developed in only a few hours, and I think it's still developing. It's too fast for her body to handle." She pointed to Thorn's swelling stomach, which, even as they watched, appeared to be growing larger.

Gran'ma knelt beside Thorn. "Thorn," she whispered. "You have to go under. Use the techniques the Headmaster taught you--"

"...Hurts..." Thorn complained.

"I know it hurts, dear," Gran'ma said. "You have to go under. Rebuild your body from the inside. You have to do it to save yourself--and the baby."

Thorn's water broke. Amniotic fluid and blood spread across Fone Bone's bed.

"Ohmygosh," Bone gasped. He covered his mouth and rushed onto the balcony. He hauled himself up the balustrade and emptied his stomach into the flowerbed three stories below. Clutching the rail, he sank to his knees.

He had never imagined anything like this. This was not how it was for bones. This was not how it should be. Wracking pain, gushing fluids. These were images of death, not life. The possibility had occurred to him as they kissed that the Stork might bring a child, but not like this--to put the baby in the woman and force her to expel it--did all humans have children this way? It seemed so unspeakably cruel.

Gran'ma was grabbing him. "Fone Bone, get in here!"

"I...can't," he sobbed, feeling nausea rising again. "I can't, Gran'ma. Please don't make me watch any more..."

"Get in here, Bone! She's calling for you." Gran'ma didn't wait for Fone Bone to stand. She clutched his shoulder hard and yanked him back into the room.

The Headmaster and Mermie were dragging Thorn off the bed.

"It'll be worse if she stays on her back," Mermie said, voice still calm. "Get her to her feet, or her knees if she can't stand."

"Unnnghh!" Thorn groaned through clenched teeth. She sank to a crouch. "Where...where's Fone? Fone?"

Fone Bone tasted acid in his throat. He ran to her side. All his earlier desires for her now turned to revulsion, but he controlled himself and said, "I'm here, Thorn."

She clutched for his hand and he took it.

"Get this dress off her," Mermie instructed.

Gran'ma looked around and found Thorn's sword belt hanging from a chair. She drew the blade and, with a swift flick, slit Thorn's dress down the back.

"That's one way of doing it," Mermie agreed.

Mermie and Gran'ma yanked off her ruined clothes.

"Hhhhuuuuuuuuuuuuuunnnngggghhhh!" Thorn gasped as she clenched her teeth and scrunched her face.

"How far apart are the contractions?" Mermie asked.

Thorn's body shook. It was almost a minute before she could speak.

"...I...I don't...hhhhuuuuuurrrrmmmmuuuuuunnnnngggghhhhh!"

"They're coming on top of each other," Mermie said.

The Headmaster held Thorn's face. "Your Majesty, listen. Whatever is happening, if you are to survive this, you must dive into the Dreaming."

"...Can't..."

"I will help you. Remember your exercises." He placed two fingers against Thorn's forehead. "Follow my voice, Your Majesty. The Dreaming fills and surrounds us. It hums. It rumbles deep within the Earth. We can feel its vibrations, its pulse, the pulse of all living things. It moves through us. It lives. It is the Old Time, the New Time, All Time. We are brought forth from its depths and to its depths we return. The mortal world is its shadow, but you must walk in the light."

Thorn fought the pain and focused her mind on his words until she was able to see them as a stream, and she entered the stream, moving with it, turning--

Her soul broke loose and went down. Her body was a shell that had grown too large for her. The sides of the shell were sticky and clung, but she pulled away and dove toward her center. A void opened. She swam into it. Inky darkness engulfed her and the pain ceased.

A light shone below her. She knew that light, and she was careful to keep her gaze away from it. It was her Center, and one who dared to look at it could never return. To view one's Center brought powerful feelings of peace, love, and communion--so powerful they could be neither denied nor escaped. Thorn had rescued Fone Bone from that brink when he touched the Crown of Horns and their souls met. She used her willpower to save herself from it now.

She hovered above the light in the cool, dark void. She knew only shadows around her, and she could not read them. She had to open her Dreaming Eye, but she hesitated--when her Eye opened, the pain would enter her again.

She opened her Eye.

For a moment, she shot back into her body, but only for a moment. There was a sharp stab, a foul smell, and an image of the Headmaster's hand before her face, but then that disappeared and she was back in the void.

The void had changed. She directly apprehended all things in her vicinity. She knew, without physically seeing or feeling, that Fone Bone's hand was still clutching hers. She knew the Headmaster still touched her face, and his power flowed into her, strengthening her.

She wrapped herself in that power, augmenting her own, and stretched out.

Her Dreaming Eye pulled in the streams of the Dreaming and sent them back changed. Thorn assessed her body. Her uterus was torn. She was bleeding internally. Her bones were disintegrating as the rapidly expanding baby hoarded her calcium.

She searched across tissues, organs, chemicals. She knew none of their names, but she understood their natures and purposes.

She stretched out beyond her body and examined her surroundings. There were few sources other than the people with her. She could easily extract from them everything she needed, but she rejected that possibility.

There was sunlight streaming through the window. She examined it, found it to consist of photons. She tried coagulating them and pressed billions together before they finally collapsed into a single quark.

She took stock of her surroundings again. The temperature in the room had dropped several degrees. There was not enough energy here to perform her task.

She stretched out further, then further still. The world shrank below her until she reached the sun.

Here was energy. She condensed energy into matter until she had the building blocks of several atoms. She began constructing calcium and potassium ions. She opened a funnel in space-time to beam the particles back to her body and place them where she needed them.

She looked back to the sun and realized she was creating a massive cool spot that was spreading as a black mass across its surface. With her heightened awareness, she recognized that she was increasing the risk of a dangerous solar flare.

She closed the funnel, backed away, and considered.

She swept her consciousness through near space and found a hot yellow dwarf only fifty light-years distant. She stretched to it--yes, it was perfect. It was several times more massive than her sun.

She began again, constructing the atoms and ions necessary to rebuild her tissues. She opened the funnel and sent the newly created matter back to her body, placing with it an avatar of her consciousness to ensure that the building blocks were properly assembled.

The cells to repair the breaches in her tissues--those would be the most difficult. She assembled several of the pieces, such as the RNA strands, ahead of time to ease her avatar's task, since it had only a fragment of her mind. She asked it for regular reports, however, and knew that it was rebuilding her body properly.

Thorn reflected on the appalling scope of her god-like powers. She had never gone this deep into the Dreaming before. She never would have thought it possible to search the universe and change its substance. Gran'ma and the Headmaster, she was sure--no, she apprehended as fact--had no idea she was capable of this, yet she did it with ease. It was almost as if she had assistance. It was impossible that the Headmaster's added power, miniscule beside her own, could enable her to accomplish this much.

She set up a new avatar to take over her task at the star and she returned to her body along the funnel.

Again, Thorn hovered in the void, but it was a void no longer. It was full of something, but something Thorn could not identify. She frowned. Nothing should be able to hide from her within her own soul...

A shape emerged from the darkness. The void had condensed into a moving body and gathered around itself a swarming cloud. It was like a tornado seen from a distance, but one that was human in form. It had four massive limbs that tapered at the ends like claws. Its torso was thick like a pillar, and topping that pillar like a sinister capital was a gigantic Dreaming Eye gaping like a mouth. The Dreaming, appearing as cords and streamers of light, fell into the Eye in a swirling torrent like a whirlpool threatening to swallow the universe.

Its Eye fell upon her. Thorn's powers paled beside this thing. Its Eye was growing closer, and Thorn felt it tugging at her. If it drew much nearer, it would swallow her soul and absorb it into itself.

In a panic, Thorn expanded until the void and the horrifying thing within it shrunk to nothing and dissipated like a dream. She was back in her body. The pain of her labor wracked her and the noise of the room crashed on her ears like a flash flood--

"Push!" Gran'ma and Mermie shouted together. "Push, Thorn!"

"Aaaaahhh!"

Thorn pushed.

Time passed. Blood flowed. Pain seethed. The baby continued to expand in her womb, unwilling to leave it. But Thorn was a Veni-yan-cari. She used her powers, and, at last, Thorn gave birth. A rush of endorphins spread through her blood. Exhaustion and euphoria overwhelmed her and, with them, unconsciousness.

The Headmaster knew when to get out of the way, so he stepped aside. Gran'ma caught Thorn and held her upright. Mermie caught the baby, snipping and tying off the umbilical cord.

As she did so, the infant uttered a piercing shriek. It shot up Mermie's arm and, with a pucker-like mouth, latched onto her throat.

Mermie screamed. Fone Bone grabbed the baby and ripped it away. Mermie fell back to the floor and clapped a hand to her jugular. Blood sprayed from under her fingers.

Fone Bone stared at the infant in his arms, and his mouth fell open. He held the child high--it was grotesque with pale, corpse-like flesh, fingers already developed into scythe-like claws, and a round mouth full of needle-like teeth dripping with Mermie's blood. But Fone Bone saw none of those things. His earlier revulsion melted like snow in a blast furnace.

"My stars," the Headmaster gasped.

"My son," Fone Bone whispered.

As Mermie's blood drained to the floor, Fone Bone's heart filled with joy.

88888

South of Boneville lay the newly planted fields. Between the plowed rows, a long, unpaved road wound a meandering path southward. To the east, the river was high, brown with mud, and flowing in a broad torrent. The road followed the river's path but was broken by numerous stone bridges fording the gushing streams that ran out of the west from the towering Big Bum-Smack Mountains. The mountains were lower near Boneville, for the city nestled at the base of the treacherous Broken Bone Pass, but the Big Bum-Smacks grew larger to the city's southwest until they were massive, rugged spires capped with glaciers and snow that never melted, even in the hottest summer. As the early morning sun shone on them, the mountains seemed topped with fire instead of ice, and a trail of golden snow, whipped out by the wind, bloomed from the highest peaks. Some of that wind tumbled down the mountains and added a cold bite to the air, but the sun's rays were hot and promised a warm afternoon. The fields were full of the clean smells of the country--the fresh perfume of flowers in bloom and the moist scent of morning dew with a tincture of manure of horse and cattle.

As the rising sun opened this lovely day, the sweet voice of a young bone maiden drifted across the fields, intermixing with the singing of the robins and meadowlarks:

"It was a lover and his lass,

With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,

That o'er the green corn-field did pass

In the spring-time, the only pretty ring-time,

When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;

Sweet lovers love the spring."

Rictus Bone stopped walking and bent his head back in exasperation. "Annie Bone," he said, "you have a beautiful, lilting voice. Now shut up."

Annie strolled up beside him. "Honestly, Rictus. It's a beautiful morning and it seems right to sing as we travel."

Rictus released a long, aggravated sigh. "We aren't traveling, Annie, we're escaping. If you'd put half as much energy into walking as you put into singing--"

"Oh no you don't!" Annie said, shaking a finger at him. "I've kept up, haven't I?"

"If 'up' is about fifteen paces behind--"

"None of that, Rictus! You're the one who keeps stopping to catch his breath."

Rictus straightened his vest and began walking again. "Hmmph. I'm not as young as I used ta be, Annie. I'd think you could at least learn some proper respect fer yer elders. What's got you in such a jolly mood, anyhow? I'd've figured you'd be pretty sour knowin' all those books were roasted."

"Not as sour as Fone'll be," Annie answered. "Very well, Rictus: that was mean, what they did, and I'm still worried about Fone and I wonder if he's all right, but...I love walking in the fields in spring! Sometimes I meander down this path while reading Leaves of Grass."

Rictus rolled his eyes and shook his head. "You oughta be more serious, Annie. We're heading outta the Boneville environs and into the wilds. See that ahead of us? That's the Night Forest. It's dark and cool and teeming with thermites. That's no-bone's-land. And on the other side of that, we're in human territory."

"Oh, so what?" Annie asked. "You're on good terms with the humans. You don't fear them."

"I do," Rictus protested. "I cultivate a respectful fear for anything that can hurt me. That's how I've lived so long. I fear a bone with a gun, and I fear a human anytime. A full-grown human can pick you up and break you in half if he's of a mind to. I fear 'em, and I suggest you do the same. It was not fearing that got me in this mess--I didn't fear Phoney because I didn't know he could hurt me, and now look."

"You don't think the humans will hurt us, do you?"

"I don't know what they'll do."

The gravel road dwindled to nothing as they entered the forest. Leafy trees cast cold shadows interrupted by hot shafts of sunlight. Birds flitted among the branches and sometimes burst in droves out of the underbrush. Liberal helpings of Spanish moss draped the trees and the ground was thick with lichen. Annie eagerly watched the shadows and was rewarded with the sight of deer prancing rapidly away and into the woods. Whenever a gap in the trees appeared, she was able to look up into the green, steep-sided foothills and spot gushing, white waterfalls.

Rictus pulled out his machete and hacked whenever blooming rhododendrons, tangled vine maple, or thorny dingleberry bushes blocked their way. He guided Annie on a straight path along the river, and they often had to ford small, burbling brooks or make their way across deep, fern-enshrouded gullies where the moss grew wet and became a thick, slimy coating on the black rocks. These dank gullies left their skin prickling with chill moisture. The birds chirruped in the trees and the sound of the roaring river and the splashing of the streams made shouting necessary if the bones were to hear each other.

They approached a wide tributary at the base of a large fall. Crouching under the torrent like a patient water-troll was a jumble of granite boulders tinted green with slime wherever the water did not strike with its fullest force. A broad pool lay around the heaped stones, and there the water received a calm respite between the tumultuous tumble of the fall and the burbling rush downstream. Scattered rocks lay in the pool, allowing the bones to jump their way across.

Nimble for his age, Rictus leapt from stone to stone until he landed on the opposite bank. Annie, her windbreaker damp from the fall's spray, followed and almost made it, but she slipped on a patch of moss and fell. She would have landed in the water, but she caught herself with her hands as her legs splayed to either side. With some effort, she pushed herself upright and made it to shore, panting.

Rictus crossed his arms. "Why don't you get rid of those things?"

"What things, Rictus?"

"Those silly shoes! Sooner or later, you're gonna hurt yerself."

She adjusted her skirt. "If you must know, Rictus Bone, the pads on my feet never developed properly and I can't walk over rough ground without my shoes."

Rictus's sour expression collapsed. "Oh--uh, sorry."

Annie brushed droplets from the sleeves of her windbreaker. "Now, if you're done catching your breath--"

"Yeah, yeah," he said, scowl returning. "I'm in better shape than you. Let's go."

Their progress slowed as the forest became thicker. The day grew old, the sunlight faded, and Rictus found an elevated patch of ground, which he cleared of brush. He built a fire, and the bones prepared their evening meal and sat opposite each other, chewing in silence.

Rictus stoked the fire, swallowed, and spoke.

"So when are you gonna ask me?"

Annie wiped her mouth. "Ask you what?"

"If I really stole the money."

"I wasn't planning to ask you at all."

Rictus leaned back against a tree. "Aren't you even curious?"

Annie's expression soured as she reached for her canteen. "I didn't come out here to discuss politics." She emphasized the last word as if it were obscene.

Rictus nodded and looked away from her as he chewed his lip. "Well, if that don't beat all. No, I guess we can't get pure little Annie Bone's clean white hands soiled with anything so dirty as politics, now can we?"

Annie glared.

Rictus chuckled. "Let me tell you something, Annie Bone. I live in the real world. I fought a war. I governed a town. You smarty-pants intellectual types--I mean you and Fone Bone and those like you--you think you're so damn smart up in your damn ivory towers with your damn books, but you know what you are? You're lazy, that's what. Ancient history, romance, poetry--all that stuff you read--it's escapism, that's all. Pure escapism. You live in your books, and you wouldn't know the real world if it bit you on the butt."

Annie sipped her canteen and said nothing.

Rictus waited.

Finally, to break the silence, Annie said in a quiet, timid voice, "At least I'm cultured."

That sent Rictus laughing.

It was true enough. Annie did not live much outside of books. She taught kindergartners in the morning and spent the rest of her day at the library. Her apartment was an absolute mess and she knew it, but cleaning could take away from her reading time. She was young yet, and she'd been told once or twice she was pretty, but she was heading for spinsterhood; she couldn't recall if she'd had a date since her high school prom.

She read anything she could find, but she particularly thrilled to Arthurian romance. Over the years, the image of the gallant knight had grown in her mind, and in her unguarded moments she pictured the likes of Sir Galahad galloping up on a white charger and sweeping her away to some magical land where there were no bills to pay or apartments to clean, and all was adventure and love and quests. And as she cast a critical eye on the eligible men of Boneville, she drew the conclusion that they lacked the makings of her knight in shining armor. And more and more, she noticed that the books that drew her were not penned by bones, but by humans. And now when she realized that she was actually going to Portsmouth and actually going to see humans, she wondered about their males.

And she shuddered as she wondered, because the thought was repulsive.

The only bone who interested Annie was Fone.

He was hardly a knight in shining armor, but at least he liked to read. Annie frequently saw him at the library, sitting at the big table surrounded by his stacks of books. He was always hunched over some formidable-looking text. She sometimes sat across from him with her own reading and sometimes he would glance up. He might even smile.

She started rushing home after work to make sure her makeup was fresh, to make sure her hair wasn't out of place, to brush her teeth before heading to the library. And though she told herself that what she really intended was to read, she felt disappointed whenever she arrived and Fone Bone was not sitting in his accustomed place.

She couldn't seem to gather the nerve to talk to him. Months went by and they exchanged a few smiles, but nothing more. Finally, one day as she saw him putting his books away in preparation to leave, she spoke to him.

"Fone Bone?"

He looked at her, but his gaze seemed distant.

"Oh, hello, Annie Bone."

She swallowed her nervousness and held a thick book out to him. "I...I see you reading in here, and, um, I thought you'd really like this."

He took the book and looked at the cover. It was Malory's Morte Darthur. "Oh," he said. "Yeah, I've been meaning to read this. Eventually."

He handed it back to her.

"Um, it's mine," she said. "Keep it."

The next day she found out that Fone Bone was dating Jeanne Bone. Annie was jealous. And embarrassed. And annoyed--she would have thought Fone had better taste: Jeanne didn't read anything except Cosmo Bone.

Annie's jealousy ended a few weeks later when Jeanne and Fone broke up, but Annie's anxiety returned. He was the only bone in Boneville with whom she had anything in common, yet she could not figure out how to approach him. All the heroic epics could not give her the bravery to do one simple deed.

With difficulty, Annie Bone pulled back to the present and stared at Rictus across the cooking fire.

"You're right," she said.

He raised a floating eyebrow.

"You're right," she repeated. "I don't know how to live. The real world scares me, and I hate it."

Rictus nodded. "I stole the money," he said.

They bent over their cooling food and chewed in silence.

88888

General Thintook of Pawa prowled through his small quarters, waving his hands in agitation. "I do not understand," he said. "I just do not understand."

Thintook's lieutenant, Astynax, was lounging on the general's bed. He knew better than to interrupt when Thintook was in one of his moods, so he clasped his hands behind his head and gave himself a small smile of satisfaction.

"I've been courting her now for a week," Thintook said, still waving. "A week, and still she has not responded to my proposal. If she does not intend to marry me, why doesn't she send me home? I have a kingdom to rebuild as well. I can't afford to lounge in Atheia while our people starve!"

Astynax cleared his throat. "I suppose we could return to Pawa. If she's such a slow mover, perhaps you could continue your courtship by courier."

Thintook harrumphed. "It's a perfect match. It would reunite our lands. I don't see why the decision should take any time."

"Perhaps it's because you're twice her age," Astynax suggested.

"Bah! Why should that matter?"

"Perhaps, like many children, she'd rather marry for love."

"Bah again! Marry for infatuation, is more like it. And she's a queen--the Harvestars have always taken advantage of such political opportunities when they have arisen."

Astynax cleared his throat again and prepared to make a more delicate suggestion. "Perhaps it's because you led the attack on the city."

"Bah and double bah! If she held a grudge, she'd send me away in contempt or even slit my throat, not hole me up in temporary and inadequate quarters and walk with me in gardens."

Astynax shrugged.

Thintook went on. "Intolerable! I expected droves of suitors when I arrived. It's been ages since an unmarried queen ascended the throne. I expected lines of men out the gate with Veni-yan turning away the most obviously undesirable. But here I am alone, and still she procrastinates."

"It is peculiar," Astynax agreed, rolling over on the bed. "She's quite a looker, too."

Thintook snorted and turned to gaze at the wan light pouring through the thick, colored glass in the window.

"Perhaps," Astynax said, rolling onto his back again, "perhaps she hesitates because there is another."

"I've seen no other."

"Well..." Astynax said, twiddling his thumbs in front of his face, "I've taken a few opportunities to sample Atheia's fine ale and wine..."

"You're a drunk," Thintook said.

"Whenever opportunity arises, milord, but my habit affords many chances to acquire the latest gossip, since wagging tongues are always to be found in taverns."

"As long as yours isn't one of them," Thintook answered, turning around. "What have you found out?"

Astynax unclasped his hands and cracked his knuckles individually as he said, "Rumor has it the queen is, ah, intimate with the little bone creature, her minister, what's his name...Fun? Fun Bone? Anyway, such is the rumor."

"Ridiculous."

Astynax pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and held it out. "Take a look at this."

Thintook strode to the bed, snatched the paper, and opened it. He scanned the lines and wrinkled his nose as he said, "What is it?"

"Appears to be a love poem, milord."

"Bloody stars, it's awful."

"Indeed. I found it on the balcony over the garden. The 'Thorn' of the poem is obviously Her Majesty. I compared this to a few official documents penned by the Fun Bone and it's his handwriting. Do you see the line about her being in his arms?"

Thintook crushed the paper in his fist. "What could a woman possibly see in a little...?"

Astynax sat up. "She's young yet. She may simply be confused. The bone did help her kill the Locust, they say. And she may be allowing you to court her as a show. After all, if it were known she were intimate with the bone creature, she would be disgraced."

Thintook tossed the balled paper back to his lieutenant. "This is inconsequential."

Astynax caught the paper and raised an eyebrow. "Lord Thintook, forgive me, but I must say...the Atheians may let their women be had by whoever wants them, but you are a general of Pawa. If you married the queen and did not find her to be a maiden, you could not display the nuptial cloth after your wedding night. You would be dishonored."

Lines of anger stretched across Thintook's brow. "Atheians! A pox on their arrogance and a pox on their queens! I've a mind to find the queen this moment, or find this bone. If there's truth in this rumor, I shall have it out!"

"Milord," Astynax said, clearing his throat again, "may I suggest..."

Thintook stormed to the door and threw it open. He stepped into the narrow hall, and as he did, he saw Fone Bone walking down a nearby stone staircase. Serenity lay on Bone's face, and he carried a small, white creature wrapped in cloth.

Fone Bone saw the general and stopped. Bone smiled and held up the bundle. "It's ours," he said in a dream-like voice.

The face in the bundle was a nightmare. A perverse mixture of human and bone, it stared at Thintook out of rolling, blood-shot eyeballs encased in black, slit-like ovals. Under its rounded nose that contained only a single, lopsided nostril, its circular, sucker mouth opened to show wet, inward-curving teeth rimming a gaping black pit. The baby hissed, and the sound chilled Thintook's blood.

Face blank, Thintook stepped back through the door and closed it.

Astynax stood from the bed. "Milord?"

"Bloody stars," Thintook whispered. "Bloody hell."

88888

It had been a quick but difficult birth. Thorn lay in her own bed, too sore to move, and stared at the heavy oak beams bracing the ceiling. Gran'ma sat next to her, holding her hand.

"Gran'ma?" Thorn mumbled.

"Yes, dear?"

"I'm sorry."

"It's all right, dear."

"What's going to happen now?"

"I don't know, honey."

"I didn't know..."

"I know you didn't, Thorn. I don't blame you." Anger underlay Gran'ma's voice.

Thorn squeezed her hand. "Don't--don't blame Fone Bone, Gran'ma. He didn't know...that I didn't know." She bit her lip. "I kissed him first. It's my fault."

Gran'ma sighed and hunched her back. "Thorn, don't feel too guilty. You have done no worse than your own grandmother."

Thorn turned her head to look at her. "What do you mean?"

Gran'ma sighed again and turned away. "Oh, dear. I...I should have told you this...when I told you everything."

Thorn scowled. "Grandmother?"

Gran'ma swallowed, took a breath, and said, "Your mother was a bastard child, like your son."

"Gram..."

Gran'ma covered her face. "Lucius is...was...your grandfather."

Thorn struggled upright. "Gran'ma," she said again through grit teeth.

"I'm sorry, Thorn."

Thorn pressed a hand against her head. "That's why he and Briar never married. She knew--and that's why she hated you so much."

Back still turned, Gran'ma nodded. "That's one of the reasons, yes."

"Grandmother!" Thorn shouted. Tears flowed down her face. "Why didn't you tell me? All this time with my grandfather and I didn't know? How many more secrets do you have from me? What else are you protecting me from?"

Gran'ma dropped her hands into her lap and looked back at Thorn. "This wasn't protection, Thorn. This was shame."

Ignoring the pain, Thorn rolled over and turned her back to Gran'ma. Her tears soaked her pillow as she dug her teeth into her lip.

"I'll let you be," Gran'ma whispered. She stood and tiptoed from the room.

**Next: Portsmouth**


	5. Portsmouth

The Chronicles of Fone Bone Oathbreaker

D. G. D. Davidson

BONE is © 2006 by Jeff Smith.

**Chapter 5: Portsmouth**

_Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner of the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse._

--Herman Melville, _Moby-Dick_

Cedric and the Headmaster stepped out of the room and onto the dark, winding staircase. They closed the door and stood there, staring at it.

Gran'ma was waiting in the hall with her arms crossed. "Well?"

"Mermie is dead," Cedric whispered.

"Blood loss," the Headmaster muttered. "At least in part. That demon's teeth savaged her artery, but there was also an infection of a like I have never seen. Probably some poison, one that rots the flesh." He rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "I believe I chose a poor time to come out of retirement. Your Majesty--may I speak with you? Cedric, do you think you can handle things from here?"

"I believe so," Cedric whispered. His voice was hoarse.

Gran'ma followed the headmaster up the twisting steps. They emerged at the tower's pinnacle, a small room flanked by only two walls. The wind through Atheia could be bitter and the air often howled down the length of the Valley, blew through and over the city, and tumbled down the steep cliffs overhanging the mountainous wastes to the south. That wind could blast through the open tower room with tremendous force, but this had been Tarsil's favorite haunt. Apparently, he had enjoyed the ferocity of nature's stormy displays.

The wind whipped through the tower now, but not fiercely, and it was a warm wind. Gran'ma and the Headmaster gazed over the festering city below them, watching the shingles prickle and the peasants' hung washing flap in the breeze. The streets teemed with merchants, buyers, and thieves. Indeed, it was easy to see why Tarsil preferred to rule from this height where he must have felt a greater control over Atheian politics than he actually enjoyed.

Gran'ma leaned on the wall near the door and let her breath out in a long sigh, joining it with the wind.

"You have seen the creature lately?" the Headmaster asked.

"Yes," Gran'ma said. "It never leaves Fone Bone's side." She touched her head. "And...it gives me the Gitchy whenever I see it."

The Headmaster scowled at her with penetrating eyes. "Has the mere sight of a person or object ever before set off the Gitchy?"

She shook her head. "No, it has always been prescient only."

"And on the night the monstrosity was conceived, you said it was the worst Gitchy you had ever felt?"

She nodded.

The Headmaster turned his stern gaze on the city. "Dark times indeed. Foolish me, I thought the dark times were over."

"As did we all, Headmaster."

"This unnatural creature is the product of an unlawful lust, and the very fabric of its being is disorder and chaos. The best thing would be to destroy it before it can cause real harm."

"I do not know how easily that could be accomplished," Gran'ma said. "Fone Bone loves his son, and Thorn--"

The Headmaster slammed a hand into the wall. "You have coddled that girl her whole life, Your Majesty. The Dreaming is again unbalanced and we must right it. Such things demand blood sacrifice and they always have. That is the price of balance."

"I am aware of the teachings, Headmaster," Gran'ma whispered.

"Are you?" the Headmaster asked. "Were you aware, then, of the bone's perverse feelings for your granddaughter?"

"I was."

"And you did nothing? Were you not aware, then, of the effect they could have?"

Gran'ma closed her eyes. "I thought it was harmless. I thought it was...cute."

"Cute?" the Headmaster demanded.

"Yes."

"You knew? You dare to tell me you knew, and yet you allowed the bone to remain in our Valley and you allowed him to be close to the queen?"

Gran'ma looked at him.

"Answer me."

"Yes," Gran'ma said.

"By the stars and dragons, why?"

Gran'ma sighed again, and the sigh this time was longer. "Because it was what Thorn wanted."

The Headmaster stood straight. "It is time, I think, to teach that girl that queens cannot have all they want. This creature is worse than an animal, and it has already cut its teeth on one victim. You must slay the beast. Rumors of its origins are already alive, but if that blasphemy itself is dead, they will quiet in time. And get rid of the bone. Kill him as well, if necessary, and to the blazes with the queen and what she bloody well wants."

Gran'ma looked away.

"Queen Mother..."

"I heard you," Gran'ma said.

Grunting in frustration, the Headmaster turned back to the heavy door. "You must kill it," he muttered. "Kill it like a dog."

The Headmaster left. Gran'ma kept her breathing steady, but only with an effort.

88888

The bones took several days to prepare for their desert journey. They filled packs, stockpiled supplies, hoarded water. Women spent their days salting meat, drying dingleberries, and baking stuffed bread-thingies. The sporting goods store ran out of backpacks, pup tents, hydration systems, and guns.

As the bones prepared and Phoney mustered his troops, Bartleby started stalking Dolly Bone.

Smiley, face downcast, strolled with Bartleby about the city, going nowhere and doing nothing. Smiley pointed out the sights of the city, but without enthusiasm. As Bartleby saw the bones walking past, their expressions ranging from fear to fascination, he felt the saliva building in his mouth, and he had to swallow to keep from drooling.

I'm so hungry, he thought. I'm sooo hungry.

He ate, and he ate in large amounts. At Bartleby's request, Smiley fed him raw steaks, but what Bartleby craved was blood, and what he craved most of all was bone blood. Since he had eaten that bone in the dumpster, Bartleby could think of nothing but that taste.

Dolly Bone ran up to them with her polka-dotted yellow dress bouncing around her knees. "Mister Smiley, Mister Smiley!" she shouted. "Can I ride your doggie?" She jumped into Smiley's arms.

Even in his morose state, Smiley could still smile at little Dolly Bone. "Why, Bartleby's not a doggie, Miss Dolly! He's a rat creature!"

"Can I ride your rat creature, Mister Smiley?"

"Shore. Bartleby wouldn't mind, would ja, Bartleby?"

Bartleby looked at the little tot in Smiley's arms. Her flesh looked fat and supple under her summer dress. Bartleby swallowed his collecting spit and rasped, "No, I...wouldn't mind."

Dolly jumped from Smiley's hands and, digging her fingers into Bartleby's fur, climbed onto his back and straddled his neck. Bartleby shivered as her soft body touched him.

She leaned over his head and looked into his face upside down. "What big eyes you have, Mister Bartleby!"

"The better to see you with," he whispered.

She sat back. "Giddyup!" she shouted as she thumped her feet against his sides.

Bartleby pranced, making a show. He cavorted up and down the street with Dolly bouncing on his back.

"Whee!" Dolly yelled.

Bartleby circled around, ran a little, and stopped at Smiley's feet. Dolly flung herself across Bartleby's neck and hugged him. As she did so, he considered how moist, how tender her meat must be, and again he found himself near drooling.

"I love you, Mister Bartleby!"

"I love you, too," Bartleby rasped.

And he meant it.

Dolly Bone walked about the city with Smiley and Bartleby. Smiley pointed out the sculptures, the buildings, the religious centers, but Bartleby watched Dolly as she skipped along, dimpled cheeks spread in a grin, yellow pigtails flapping against her shoulders.

They came upon Floyd Bone. He was wearing a leather flight jacket and a hiking pack, obviously getting ready for the trip to the Valley. Floyd was an experienced bowhunter and he was cradling his compound bow.

"Hello, Mister Floyd!" Dolly said, waving.

Floyd smiled. "'Lo, Miss Dolly," he said. "And 'lo to you, too, Smiley Bone."

"Hiya, Floyd!" Smiley returned, doffing his hat.

Floyd stared into Bartleby's eyes as he spoke to Smiley. "You hear the news, Smiley? Ol' Gunder Bone, janitor out at th' interpretive center, he gone missin'. Ain't nobody seen 'im fer weeks and weeks now. His wife is plum frantic. You heard the news?"

Smiley frowned. "Gosh, no, Floyd! What with everything..." He trailed off before continuing, "I guess I just haven't kept up on the news!"

"Nope," Floyd agreed, his eyes never leaving Bartleby's face.

Bartleby tried to return Floyd's bright, piercing gaze, but he couldn't. As he and Smiley and Dolly continued down the street, Bartleby looked back at Floyd. The tall bone pointed his bow at Bartleby and pantomimed pulling back the string. He opened his fingers and, as he did so, mouthed a slow, quiet sound--

"Psssshhhheeeeew."

Bartleby swallowed, turned his head, and quickened his pace to catch up with Smiley and Dolly.

88888

They were ready to go. The bones were gathered, a hundred and twenty of them. All were equipped. Most were armed. Several were children. They stood in rows in the middle of Main Street near Round Square. Around them, the rest of Boneville was milling, pointing, and cheering. The Firehouse Band was assembled and the players were tuning their instruments. A few pieces of confetti floated from upper-story windows.

Phoney would have felt better about the expedition if he could just shake the strange dreams he was having. He wasn't sure when they began, but they were frightening. Every night, when Phoney closed his eyes, he found himself in a dark room or a void or some kind of empty space without light. Even though he couldn't see, he could sense some sort of object before him. He would try to touch it, and he would be horrified to find it was moving. It was an enormous creature, a being of cloud or an amorphous condensation of the darkness of the void, and in the center of its head was an even deeper void that pulled like a vacuum.

This creature or monster or whatever it was uttered a harsh whisper. As it spoke, Phoney was overcome with terror.

It whispered, "You are mine. You were mine from the beginning, and you do my will."

Phoney awoke each night covered in sweat and breathing hard. The dream was vivid. It seemed so real.

He wasn't sleeping well and he was getting tired, but he couldn't let it show.

Phoney marched down the front line of his troops. They included some of the toughest and unruliest bones of the city. First among them was Squamous Bone, beady-eyed and rail-thin, packing two old-fashioned six shooters on his hips.

"How ya doin', Squamous?"

"Nit bed. Y'self, Phoney?"

"Good, great."

Next to Sqaumous stood the squat, overweight, and perpetually dirty Funny Bone dressed in his ever-present red wool sweater. He had a war surplus 30-30 repeater rifle slung over his back. Funny gave Phoney the creeps. He was a jobless drifter, much like Smiley.

"Ya ready, Funny?" Phoney asked.

"Good ta go, Phoney Bone," Funny answered through his adenoids.

Beside Funny was Tiberius "T." Bone, the owner of a fast food chain some believed to be the cover for a narcotics ring. He carried a .30-06, had a 12-guage over-and-under on his back, and wore a .22 handgun stuffed into his belt.

Phoney looked T. Bone over and noted the numerous gold chains around his neck. "Uh, hey, T. Bone, I see ya got a lot of, er, bling, there."

T. Bone glared over his dark sunglasses. "Smooch you, pie-hole."

"Okaaay," Phoney said, moving on.

Beside T. Bone were Boneville's famous survivalists, the muscular Mastoid Bone and his wife Tibia, decked out in their typical camouflage. Tibia packed a 30-30 deer rifle and her husband carried a double-barreled 12-guage loaded with solid slugs.

"Loaded fer bear, Mastoid?" Phoney asked.

Mastoid grunted. "Loaded for more of 'em rat creatures, Phoney. Or them human bastuds."

Floyd Bone stood apart. Riding on his shoulders was little Dolly Bone, who was busy playing with Floyd's thick, soft hair. But Floyd wasn't paying attention. He was checking the string on his bow for fraying.

"How about you, Floyd?" Phoney asked.

Driven by some secret emotion, Floyd's hands tightened and then relaxed before they went back to petting the bow. "Jist fine, Phoney Bone," he said. "I's jist fine."

Smiley, Bartleby by his side, ran to Phoney and grabbed his shoulder. "Phoney!" he said. "You can't let 'em bring children. It's dangerous!"

Phoney pulled Smiley aside and whispered, "A lot of 'em will head home before we get there. They think they're off on a lark. Don' worry, Smiley. Everythin'll be fine."

"You keep saying that!" Smiley grumbled back.

Phoney ignored him. Hands behind his back, Phoney paced back and forth in front of the bones. He raised his voice so most of the assembly could hear him. "Fellow Bonevillains," he announced, "we go this day to rescue a hapless brother from the unclean hands of those who have perverted his mind."

"Tha's right!" Squamous shouted.

"We go into danger," Phoney said. "This desert can be crossed; my cousin and I have proven that. But we traversed it in late fall and early spring. Summer is rising and the heat will be great. Conserve your water and keep your hats low on your brows. We need not fear, however, for we do not go unequipped or unarmed."

"Dang right!" yelled Mastoid Bone.

Phoney gazed over the army, looking each bone in the eye. The thought came to him again, Why am I doing this? He couldn't see any way to make money off of it, and as he thought back to his nightmares, he wondered if his will were really his own.

Of course it was. Nobody rolled the dice for Phoney Bone.

"Bones," he said, "let's go."

Phoney climbed onto Bartleby's back and drew Piecemaker, holding it over his head. With a great cheer, the bones followed him, tromping up Main Street toward the park and the river. The Firehouse Band began a rousing march. The traveling bones waved to the crowd and the crowd waved back, blew kisses, and threw colored paper into the air.

Smiley lagged behind, but he followed.

Bartleby turned his head several times to spot Dolly bobbing on Floyd Bone's shoulders. Bartleby was relieved that she was among the children traveling to the Valley. He didn't want to be separated from his new pal.

No, he didn't want to be separated from her. Not even for a moment, if he could help it.

88888

Rictus and Annie continued their march through the forest. Days had passed, and the forest's pleasantness and hushed sense of expectation had ceased, for clouds had rolled in from the Big Bum-Smack Mountains, and their gray underbellies dropped a continuous drizzle of chilly, enervated rain.

Annie tried to shift her pack, the wet straps of which were digging into her shoulders and, no doubt, leaving red rashes. An umbrella, she thought as the windbreaker clung to her like an itchy and clammy second skin, that's what I forgot. An umbrella. And I bet the books in my bag are ruined.

"You know," Annie said, "the walking's a lot easier on the other side of the river."

"Yes," Rictus said with his limp fedora hanging around his ears, "but the bone-suckers come out of the desert and congregate at the water's edge, and there are other dangers."

Rictus glanced through the sopping trees to the far bank of the Rolling Bone. Without mountain streams to moisten the ground, the land to the east of the river was arid. High sandstone cliffs rose above the pebbled shore and marked the edge of desert. Dry, grass-filled channels cut through the cliffs and opened to the river. The east bank did look pleasant compared to the thick brush and overgrown ravines they were now traversing, but Rictus knew those stream channels were prone to flash flooding, and though the present rain didn't look to be enough to cause danger, a real torrent could follow.

Annie stopped walking.

Rictus turned to her. "Don't tell me you're tired."

"Not really," she said, "but my shoes are soaked and I think I'm getting a blister."

He looked at her as if he were studying a peculiar zoo exhibit. "A blister? On your foot?"

"Yes."

"On the bottom of your foot?"

"Yes."

Rictus scrunched up his mouth and sighed. "Your parents put you in shoes as a kid, didn't they?" He shook his head. "Big fad, I remember it. 'Shoe your children,' the ads said. And then all these kids' feet don't form properly and they're stuck in shoes for life." He picked up one of his own feet and tapped the bottom. "Hard as wood," he said. "I've never needed shoes..."

"Rictus," Annie interrupted, "if you've finished criticizing my mother's parenting, might I suggest a means of speeding up this little expedition? Why don't we build a raft and float downstream to Portsmouth?"

Rictus put his hands on his hips. "You've been reading too many children's books. A raft? And what, pray tell, are we going to build it with?"

"Well," she said, "we've certainly got wood, and you've got your big knife thingie--"

"It's a machete, Annie."

"--so why don't you use it to cut down some trees and build a raft?"

He nodded. "Good idea. Why don't I use my machete to cut down some trees? Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound?" He ran to a large oak and kicked it. "Three and a half feet through, I'd wager. You want me to cut it down with a machete? You want me to hew it into boards with a machete? You want me to build you a smoochin' cabin in the woods with a machete?"

Annie crossed her arms and glared. "Rictus Bone, I will remind you that I'm a lady, and I will not tolerate such vulgarity in my presence. The proper word, if you absolutely must use it, is 'osculate.'"

"Save it for yer kindergartners. And try this one: Osculate you."

"Rictus!"

He rolled his eyes. "Sorry."

She gestured around them. "Look, Rictus. Fallen trees. Fallen limbs. All you need to do is cut the branches off and we could tie the limbs together and we're off down the river."

He rubbed his neck. "Dangerous. River's high."

"If we don't find a way to pick up the pace, Phoney's going to be in that Valley before we have a chance to catch him."

"I don't have any rope."

"I have rope. Lots of it. Good, strong climbing rope."

Rictus didn't argue further. They found a clear spot where the trees didn't reach to the edge of the water, and they dragged together the largest, straightest limbs they could find. Most of the branches they simply broke off, and Rictus used the machete very little. Already wet and miserable, they received numerous cuts and scratches as they tromped through the underbrush. The wetness and clinging bits of bark and leaves made the cuts itch. It took most of the day, but in the end, they had enough for a raft large enough for the two of them. Annie pulled the rope out of her pack and cut it into lengths, handing each to Rictus, who set about lashing the logs together. By this time, the light was fading and the wind had increased, and it was clear it would be a chilly, wet night.

It did no good, but Annie pulled the windbreaker tighter. The rain had stopped, and the only drizzle came from the dripping leaves of the oaks and maples. That at least was some relief.

Annie heard a curious hissing in the woods behind them. She turned her head to listen.

She heard it again. Some forest animal.

"Rictus?"

"Shhh," he answered. She looked at him and saw he had stopped tying.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Don't know." He pulled the pistol from his belt and gazed into the shadowy trees.

The hissing came again, this time accompanied by a harsh clicking.

"Thermites," Rictus said. "Nasty buggers. Let's get this thing in the water fast."

He holstered the gun and set about finishing his knots. Annie joined him.

Something dropped out of the trees about twenty yards away.

"Almost done," Rictus muttered.

About ten yards away, a wall of dense rhododendrons rustled. Annie squinted, trying to make out the source of the noise.

The rustling stopped. She slid her eyes carefully over the glen, noting the dripping leaves, the rain-darkened bark of the trees. She searched for something out of place--

There. A pair of bulbous, insect-like eyes gazed from under a tangle of flowers. The eyes were about a foot across each, and Annie had no desire to see the creature attached to them.

A red glimmer appeared under the creature's eyes, and the eyes reflected the light like a glass honeycomb. Annie tried to make out the source of the light and discovered that the giant insect had a straight horn, about a foot long, situated above its mouthparts. The horn was glowing an angry crimson. When the dripping water touched it, Annie heard a hiss like liquid striking a hot griddle, and faint wisps of water vapor floated up before the thing's eyes.

"Help me push the raft into the water," Rictus whispered, "and try not to provoke it."

Annie nodded. Helping him push meant turning her back on the monster. She didn't like it, but she swallowed and did it.

The thermite snarled.

Rictus swung around as the insect launched its huge body out of the undergrowth. Rictus fired the gun and the thermite's head exploded, but its body was still flying towards him. Annie leapt at Rictus, knocking him to the ground as the bug's forward momentum carried its carcass over them and into the river where the hot horn hissed and squealed.

Annie jumped up. Rictus stood a little more slowly, rubbed his back, and grimaced. "I am definitely too old for that."

"And too heavy," Annie added, rubbing the shoulder that had struck him.

Behind them, hundreds of heavy objects thudded to the ground out of the trees.

"Let's get out of here," Rictus shouted.

They shoved hard against the raft and waded into the water as a hive of thermites appeared out of the woods, horns glowing. The bones hopped on the raft and poled away from the shore.

Rictus waved to the thermites as the swift current carried them away.

"Yeah," he said. "The raft was a good idea."

The river was high and swift, but it was broad and deep, and the travel was smooth. The clouds hung low and looked threatening, but with any luck, it would be a quick, safe ride to Portsmouth.

Night drew on, and they shivered in their wet clothes. They pulled soggy food from their packs and ate what they could. It didn't look as if either of them would get much sleep.

Rictus chewed a watery dingleberry cake and said, "I know you're dying to ask me."

"Ask you what?"

"Why I stole the money."

Annie looked up for a moment and then looked back at her food.

"Don't you care?" Rictus asked.

"Does it matter?"

Rictus had to think about that. "It matters to me. At least let me confess. Pretend you're interested."

Annie finished her food, closed her pack, clasped her hands in her lap, and looked at him. By her expression, she was either interested or good at feigning it.

Rictus scratched at the back of his neck. "Well...where to begin?"

Annie sighed.

"Okay, okay," Rictus said. "Here it goes. You know I fought in the war. Five years, and most of 'em I spent in a trench near Darton. We thought it'd be a picnic, easy as pie, over in months. We were developin' machine guns and flame-throwers and the humans mostly had flintlocks, but they had tactical geniuses and they were desperate. They knew if we won, we could wipe 'em out. Hell, maybe we would have, I don't know. I married Claudia Bone just before I went off to fight. I ran right out of the ceremony into a troop transport and never saw Claudia for those five years. Prime years of my life I spent in a trench. And for what? What the hell were we fighting over? Some misunderstanding, some diplomatic snafu, and bones and humans died over it. Fortunately, it ended with the armistice and they drew the borders with this forest in between. If they hadn't, I might've died in that trench."

He paused to take a drink. "Shortly after I got home, Claudia and I had a son, Ortho Bone. We spent three days on the roof with a spotting party and telescopes. It was ol' Floyd Bone--er, that's the current Floyd's father--who saw the Stork first, and then everybody was pointin' as that distant white speck grew closer an' closer until we could see the bundle he held in 'is beak. Oh, it was beautiful. I dunno if you've ever seen 'im, Annie, but he's incredible. Big, majestic bird. He lighted on our roof ever so gently and Claudia rushed up to him and knelt, and he placed our baby Ortho in her arms, and she was crying--just crying--and the Stork gave her this little nod and stood aside lookin' all regal as I passed out the cigars and champagne. The Stork wouldn't take any, 'course, 'cause he never does, but he stayed a few minutes and watched us celebratin' as everybody admired the new baby."

Rictus scratched the back of his neck again. "That...was shortly before the Polio epidemic. It started with the humans, and there were even a few bones who said it was judgment from God, but then it hit us. At first, I was almost pleased, because I figured those self-righteous bones would have to shut up. But then I thought maybe they were right. After all, I couldn't see as we were much better than the humans were."

He swallowed with difficulty. "Ortho...got it. They licked it a few years later when they made the vaccine, but by then a lot of kids were maimed, and Ortho was dead, and Claudia had left me."

Annie's steady gaze faltered.

"What was left of Ortho's generation grew up. I used my war-hero shtick to get elected mayor and stay mayor. Then came the worst industrial accident Boneville'd ever seen--the Custard Pie Incident. What was so sick was it was preventable. I had pressed for years for more workplace safety, and nobody listened. The taxpayers didn't want to pay for it."

"I lost my father in the Incident," Annie whispered.

"A lot of kids did," Rictus said. "Yer Fone Bone and his cousins all lost their parents. The last of Big Johnson's line, and they were street urchins. Through it all, Annie, I saw a lot of hurtin' kids. Parents lost in the war, kids maimed by disease, parents lost in an accident. I pressed and pressed for a children's hospital and an orphanage. But guess what? Nobody wanted to pay for it. I couldn't pay for it myself. My salary wasn't that high. So I thought, Why not just take it? So I did. I took the money over several years until I had a fair amount set aside. I was gonna build that orphanage, and then I realized if I did, I'd get caught."

"So you kept the money."

Rictus shrugged. "It was stupid from the start, and I admit it. But I was angry, and I figured after everything...I figured Boneville owed me one."

Annie closed up her pack and lay down as if to sleep.

"Aren't you gonna say anything?" Rictus asked.

"Aren't you done?" Annie asked in turn.

"Yeah...but don't you wanna call me an idiot, something?"

Annie turned over. "It's time I tried to sleep, Rictus."

Rictus looked up at the darkened gray sky, lit only by an eerie sliver of moon peeping through the clouds. "This girl," he mused, "doesn't have to say a thing to lay a guilt trip."

88888

The night was long and cold, but morning finally came. The sun drove amber rays between the jagged sandstone cliffs flanking the desert. The light was the color of fire, but it turned gray as ash when the sun rose higher and disappeared behind the clouds that still hung low over the land. The air was chilly, but as the gray, gusty day wore on, the air grew warmer and the bones' clothes began to dry.

Annie watched the forest as it rolled past. She saw the huge, leafy Trees of Yearning towering over the lower oaks, and she saw grassy swales where gigantic hungrisaurs covered in leathery gray hide stomped their broad, flat feet, swung their thick tails, stretched their long necks, and munched placidly at the leaves.

Annie shuddered. "I'm glad we avoided those."

"They're docile unless provoked," Rictus said, "but this is the time they lay their eggs, so it is the most dangerous season to approach them."

They slid by a thick, dark area of the forest that was somehow dreadful.

"What's in there?" Annie whispered.

"Heart of the forest," Rictus replied. "Rumor has it the Wood Shriek lives in there, if it really exists."

On their left, the white-faced cliffs still rose between the grassy wadys. While the forest on the right was ever changing, the desert on the left was still the desert.

Then the eastern cliffs stopped, leaving a broad, sandy shore in their place. On the right, the land opened out. The forest ended, replaced by heathery hills with eroded sides revealing chalk. Villages dotted the hills, hunkered beneath curling strands of smoke.

"The land of the humans," Rictus said. "Portsmouth."

To the left, Annie could hear the herdsmen calling to the cattle grazing at the desert's edge, and plodding, fat brown cows lowed as they munched the cropped grass. To the right, she could glimpse farmers working their fields among the rolling hills. Up ahead, on a series of low cliffs and jagged plateaus, stood a jumble of unpainted wooden buildings. The buildings stopped at a high wooden wall topped with sharpened stakes. Annie guessed that the wall surrounded Portsmouth's city center. The only substantial structure she could see in the human settlement was a lighthouse of rough-hewn stone standing on a rocky cliff at the end of the river mouth. The tower's glassed-in top shone with a candle, a stark point of yellow light against the dull sky. Wooden boats of many shapes and sizes plied the wide river, and beyond them, the open sea stretched to a flat horizon now vague with the misty clouds overhanging it.

Annie could smell salt. A loud horn bellowed and she jumped.

Rictus, face grave, poled the raft to the right bank as they approached the sprawling limits of Portsmouth. They ditched the raft and walked up row after row of rude houses. Humans peeked out of windows or doorways. Some in the street saw the bones and moved aside. Some glared. Some spat.

Rictus made sure his pistol was visible.

Annie wasn't as eager to stare at the humans as she had expected to be. They were big, and they were scary, just as Rictus had warned. Their faces were lined and strangely featured, and their clothes were faded gray or brown and covered in patches. The men, she realized with some horror, were wearing clothing on their lower bodies, which lent them an unpleasant effeminacy. The humans looked bizarre, but more than that, they stank. Annie could hardly believe the odor that flowed down the street. There were the animals, of course, but there was also a rank, fetid stench of human sweat. It was dense and suffocating.

"Do they always smell like that?" Annie whispered.

"Shhh!" Rictus hissed back. "You wanna rile 'em up? Besides, they say the same thing about us. Serge once told me walkin' into Boneville is like gettin' smothered with ground mint. Now keep quiet and don't talk unless I tell you to."

As they approached the wooden wall, Annie reached out and seized Rictus's arm. He looked at her and saw she was clenching her teeth.

"You were all enthusiastic to meet the humans, but now you're nervous?"

"Yes."

Rictus patted her hand. "Well, relax. I am on good terms here. And besides, you need to keep calm--they can smell fear and that's when they attack."

He turned away from her, but when he noticed her shocked stare, he turned back. "That was a joke."

"It wasn't funny."

A shout from the room overhanging the gate cut off the impending argument: "Halt! Wer da?"

Rictus called back, "Is Serge still Master of Portsmouth?"

The voice above the gate replied in broken Bonish, "Eh? Who asking?"

"Rictus Bone and Annie Bone of Boneville!" Rictus shouted.

"Do you haf goods to trade?"

"No!"

"Zen go 'vay, Bone!"

Annie heard a clatter and a different voice said faintly, "Idiot! Zat is Rictus Bone, zer mayor! Do you vant all zuh bones down here to kill our vomen und our children?"

Rictus grinned sheepishly at Annie. "Of course, there are still some tensions..."

"Stay zer!" the new voice said. "Ve get Serge for you now, ja?"

Annie and Rictus stood in front of the gate for several minutes. Annie tapped her foot. Rictus joined his hands behind his back and whistled.

The broad wooden gate opened. Standing before a long, narrow street lined with wooden buildings was an enormous, bald man flanked by soldiers carrying what looked like bone-made hunting rifles. The bald man wore a faded green shirt and baggy, khaki pants. He held out two thick, meaty hands and a lopsided grin appeared on his face, showing a few broken teeth. When he spoke, he bellowed as if he were used to making himself heard over a wind tunnel. "By zuh Flaming Vheels und zuh Burning Car! Rictus Bone, you sumbitch!"

Rictus bellowed right back, "Serge, you smoochin' bastard!"

Serge tromped up, picked Rictus up from the ground, and squeezed him in a tight bear hug.

Serge held Rictus at arm's length. "Rictus Bone! You look...fat, actually. But ozervise, you look good! Vhy haf you not visited your friend Serge?"

"Busy, busy," Rictus answered.

Serge set him down and turned to Annie. "And who is zis? Rictus, you dog! Still at it at your age?"

Annie narrowed her eyes, sucked in one cheek, and said, "We're just friends."

Rictus cleared his throat and gestured to Annie. "Uh, Annie Bone, this is Serge, der Bürgermeister of Portsmouth. Serge, this is Miss Annie Bone."

"A pleasure," Serge said, bowing deeply. Annie answered with a curtsy.

Rictus said in a lower voice, "I expect her to be unmolested during our stay."

Serge nodded and waved a hand. One of the soldiers jumped from the line and ran to Serge's side. Serge clapped a hand on the soldier's shoulder. "My lieutenant, Dietrich. If you vish, Dietrich is Annie's personal bodyguard vhile in Portsmous."

Annie looked at Dietrich and swallowed. She wasn't sure how to judge the age of humans, but she guessed him to be a young man. He had a rigid jaw, a narrow nose, and peculiar, complicated human eyes that appeared to be black from pupil to iris. He gave her one glance and nodded. Annie felt her skin go damp. She didn't want Dietrich as her personal bodyguard.

"Come, Rictus," Serge said. "Ve must smoke cigars, get stinking drunk, und talk of old times, ja?"

"That sounds marvelous, Serge," Rictus agreed. "But no cigar for me. I quit."

"Vheels! Not so?"

"Yup."

"You still drink?"

"Absolutely."

Serge nodded, looking very happy. He turned and led the bones into the citadel. Smells of wet wood, mud, molding hay, and a few fouler things ran under the human reek. The gate creaked shut behind them, and the soldiers secured it with a heavy bar. Annie felt trapped, not so much by the fortress as by the smell.

They turned several corners as they threaded through the claustrophobic acropolis. Everything was made of rough and untreated wood. Mud ran up the sides of the buildings, apparently splattered by the gigantic horses Annie saw clopping through the streets. Everything in Portsmouth seemed so large.

They had to ascend a flight of creaking steps to reach Serge's room. Annie and Rictus had to climb the high stairs on hands and knees. The room they entered, though it had a tall ceiling, seemed close because of the brown wooden walls, the darkness, and the heavy smell of stale tobacco. A fire blazed in a fireplace on the far side of the room, but it cast more shadows than light. Serge pulled out chairs for the bones, the bones climbed into them, and Serge pushed the chairs up to a heavy oak table.

Serge took a chair himself. Though the other soldiers had dispersed, Dietrich had come silently into the room and now stood at Serge's shoulder.

"So," Serge said, rubbing his hands together, "somesing to vet your sroat after zuh long trip, ja? Dietrich, bring me scotch und vater. You, Rictus?"

"Scotch," Rictus said. "No water."

Dietrich turned his liquid eyes to Annie and asked quietly, "And you, Fräulein Annie?"

"Water," she said. "No scotch."

Dietrich moved to a small wet bar in the corner, put together the drinks, and moved them to the table. He poured two glasses of water for Annie and himself and pulled up a chair next to Serge.

Rictus took a dangerously large swallow of scotch and said, "I might as well cut to the chase, Serge. Much as I'd like it to be, this isn't a social call."

"Ah, ja. I sought not. I know you, Rictus," Serge replied, sipping at his own drink.

Rictus took another gulp. "Where to begin? Well, I'll make this brief. There's an army--no, more like a mob--of bones heading into the desert. They're going because a certain Phoncible Bone has hoodwinked them. I believe you know him."

Serge scratched his jaw. "Phoncible? Phoncible? I don't believe..."

"Alias Phoney."

Serge slammed a flat hand onto the table, rattling the glasses. "Phoney Bone! Ja, he vas in Portsmous vis his tall, skinny cousin about two years ago. He started somesing called zuh 'New Age School of Lamaze und Bungy-Jumping.' He ran off vis a good deal of money before ve had zuh chance to kill him, and he left behind many injured mozers und children."

Rictus nodded. "That's the one. We drove him out of Boneville again last year when he gave most of the town a serious case of food poisoning. And that's no joke for a bone, ya know. We lose all our bodily waste through sweat, so some of the people there dehydrated pretty rapidly."

"They had to rush them to St. Bone-aventure's and put them on IVs," Annie added.

"What is it you are asking of Portsmous, zen?" Serge asked.

Rictus finished the drink and dropped the glass on the table with a clunk. "According to Phoney, if you believe him, there's a valley across the desert and there are humans there. Do you know of them?"

Serge shook his head. "Ve know of no ozer humans except zuh Full-Figured Gals, und ve haf no dealings vis zem."

Rictus continued, "Phoney's off with a bunch of armed bones to rescue one of his cousins, who he says is being held there. I don't know the weapons capabilities of this Valley, but I think Phoney could start a war. I was hoping you and a team of yours would come with me across the desert, all the way to the Valley if necessary, to intercept the bones--peacefully--and drive them back home."

Serge sat back and crossed his arms. "Vat do you sink vould motivate zuh bones to cease zer operations?"

"A show of superior force."

Annie grabbed Rictus's arm. "Rictus..."

"Not now, Annie."

"Rictus," Serge said, "you know ve do not haf zuh technological capabilities of zuh bones. Our best veapons are bone-made hunting rifles."

"Rictus, what about Fone?" Annie asked.

"Cut the sweat, Serge," Rictus said. "We both know Portsmouth bought illegal assault weapons from bone smugglers--who we never caught, by the way--and we both know you would never, except in a moment of insanity, turn over your entire inventory of military weapons to me just because I asked nicely. Weapons in Boneville are regulated, so it's the bones who have only hunting rifles and the like; I'm sure Phoney didn't break into the armory to equip his mob. This isn't a military strike, but a group of misfits and ne'er-do-wells. Whatever weapons you have here--preferably big, scary ones--will make for a superior force."

"Herr Bürgermeister," Dietrich interrupted, "ich muss--"

Serge stopped him with an upraised hand. "Nein, Dietrich. Ve haf guests. Speak in zuh Bonish."

Dietrich frowned, but he composed himself and said, "I must protest zis, Herr Bürgermeister. Ve sould not reveal secrets to zees bones. Zey may be spies."

Serge laughed and waved this off. "Spies? Dietrich, zis is Rictus Bone!"

Dietrich scowled at Rictus. "I know."

"Dietrich," Serge said, "it seems Rictus und I haf private matters to discuss. Please vait outside."

"But..."

"Now, Dietrich."

Dietrich stood, straightened his uniform, walked to the door, and left.

"Can I trust you, Rictus?" Serge asked.

"Of course," Rictus answered, voice still jovial as if nothing had happened. "We tried to kill each other in the war, remember? If you can't trust me, who can you trust?"

"Und your voman?" Serge asked.

"I'm not..." Annie began.

"Annie, wait outside," Rictus said.

Annie turned a fierce look on Rictus. He answered it with a cool gaze. "Out, Annie. The boys need to talk things over."

Annie was furious. She clenched her teeth but remained composed. She was afraid to walk outside without Rictus nearby, but she was mad enough that she didn't want to show it, so instead of complaining further, she slid off her chair and walked to the door with her nose in the air.

Annie stepped out and climbed down the steps to the wooden sidewalk fronting the street. The night felt cold after Serge's sweltering fire, and Annie felt her skin grow taut as her glands released insulator oil into her dermis. She wrinkled her nose as the scents of Portsmouth wafted past her olfactory membrane. No doubt about it, humans stank. That would take some getting used to.

A creak in the boardwalk startled her. She looked over to see Dietrich sitting on a bench by the wall under a mounted candle. He hunched over a prayer chaplet, and his mouth moved silently as he fingered the beads. After a moment, he noticed her gaze and looked up. He gave her a faint, embarrassed smile as he crumpled the beads into his palm.

"Do you believe in zuh Holy Chariot, Miss Bone?"

She clasped her hands behind her back. "I'm afraid I've never heard of it, Mister Dietrich."

He played idly with the beads and gazed into the dark town. "Zuh first ancestors of zuh humans sinned. Zuh Chariot brought us here for a time of testing, and vhen ve die, zuh Chariot comes to take zuh righteous back to Paradise."

"How does it know if you're righteous?"

He looked into her eyes and gave her another faint smile. "By vhezer or not ve love."

"Well." Annie tried to look nonchalant rather than frightened of this tall human. She walked toward him, looking out over Portsmouth's evening fires. "It sounds as if it doesn't matter much if I believe in it or not, since it's all about humans."

"I never sought of zat. Perhaps zuh bones came here vis zuh humans." He shoved the beads into a pocket. "Or perhaps zuh bones find redemption anozer vay."

Hollow footsteps sounded from the boardwalk. A tall woman entered the small circle of yellow light and smiled. Her skin was fair and crinkles appeared around her eyes as she grinned. "Dietrich!" the woman said. "Does Serge have you vorking late again?"

"Ja," Dietrich answered, standing to greet the woman. "But only for a little longer, Isabella."

She smiled up at him, but then noticed Annie. "Oh! You are entertaining zuh bones, of course." She patted Dietrich's arm. "He keeps you such long hours! You need your rest."

"I vill be fine, Isabella. Let me introduce you. Zis is Miss Annie Bone of Boneville."

"How do you do," Isabella said, curtsying.

"And zis is Miss Isabella."

"Charmed," Annie replied. She looked at the two humans standing beside one another. To her eyes, they looked similar, although Isabella was a good deal paler and had lighter, wispier hair. "Your...sister?" Annie asked.

"His fiancée," Isabella replied. She turned to Dietrich. "Good night, Dietrich. Get some rest." She kissed his cheek before turning and walking into the dark. Her long dress whisked about her narrow ankles as her echoing footsteps faded.

Annie bit her lip and tried not to look revolted. She had told herself during the journey that the humans would have strange customs and that she ought not to be offended, but it shocked her to see non-relatives kissing, and in public, and so perilously near the mouth.

"It is late, Miss Bone. Vould you like me to show you your room?"

His voice cut into Annie's thoughts. She jumped. "Of...of course, Dietrich. Yes, please."

He bowed and gestured into the darkness. "Zis vay, denn."

Still struggling to hide her nervousness, she followed him out of the light. Her heart thrummed in time to the beat of her hiking shoes against the creaky wooden boards.

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Serge ran a hand over his bald pate. His head reflected the orange firelight. "I apologize for Dietrich," he said. "He is young und very--how do you say?--by-zuh-book."

"Don' worry about it," Rictus answered. "Annie's the same way. Sweet girl but kind of a prude. But now--what about those guns?"

Serge sighed. "Ja, your guess vas correct, Rictus. Ve gave back only enough to look honest. In fact, ve bought many veapons and returned only, say, von tens of zuh total."

"One tenth?" Rictus said, amazed. "Serge, you gave back over a hundred firearms!"

"Ja. Ve spent much money vis your city's criminals."

They stared at each other across the table. "Jeez," Rictus said, "I'd hate to be our guys in the next war."

"Let's hope zer is no more var, Rictus. Our peoples have seen enough pointless bloodshed, und zat is vhy I am joining you on zis ridiculous scheme visout any furzer qvestions. I vould not do so und risk more hatred if zer vas no chance of stopping var. It is time to bury zuh past und put it in textbooks ver it belongs."

"Fine," Rictus said, "but right now, let's deal with practical matters. Where do you keep the goods?"

"In several caches around zuh town. Von is here is zis office." Serge rose and moved to a shadowed wood panel on one wall. He tapped it at the corners with his knuckles, loosening it. Pulling it aside, he revealed a cupboard lined with a hodgepodge of bone-made firearms. On the back wall of the hidden compartment, Rictus could see stacked boxes of bullets and shells.

Serge pulled out several handguns and dumped them on the table. Rictus sorted through them.

"These are empty, right?"

"Ja, und safeties are all on."

Rictus picked up a couple of black .25 automatics and grimaced. "Someone sold you some cheap stuff, Serge. I wouldn't trust my life to these." He tossed them back on the table. "Leave those behind." He picked through the guns until he found a few revolvers and automatics he trusted, and he pushed them to one side. "These are good makes."

Serge's upper body was in the closet. He emerged with rifles, shotguns, and submachine guns tucked under his arms. He laid these on the table.

Rictus picked up a rifle, looked it over, cocked it, and peered through the scope. "This is a pretty good 30-30. I'd trust it."

He picked up a submachine gun and shook his head. "Not this one."

"Vhy not? I haf found it powerful und accurate."

Rictus pointed to the empty slot for the clip. "This thing has to be loaded with greased bullets. You get sand in there and the whole thing's gummed up. Leave it."

He picked up another, glared contemptuously, and put it back down. "Too many bells and whistles."

He picked up a pump-action riot gun with a pistol grip and a flashlight built on the front. "...Mmmm, police model. This amuses me. Go ahead and take it."

He looked at the small pile of weapons deemed acceptable. "Anything else? Anything fully automatic that doesn't have to be greased?"

Serge dove into the closet again and came back with more weapons. He laid them down.

Rictus looked over the new pile and nodded. "I like these. This 9-mm is our military standard. Those fully automatic pistols are corny, but they get the job done. And this .32 overheats easy and I've seen it cook off, but it's fine if you don't use it like an idiot. Is that it?"

"One more sing," Serge said, pulling out an enormous weapon that looked too big even for him. "Zis is somesing of our own design. Zuh 'boys downstairs,' as ve affectionately call zem, haf been vorking on zis for some time. Zey have been studying zuh bone designs and haf 'scaled zem up,' you might say, and built zuh first Portsmous machine gun."

He dropped the clunker on the table with a heavy thud. A few of the pistols fell off the table's end.

"That thing's huge," Rictus grunted.

"Ja."

"What is it? It looks like you made it out of cast iron."

Serge laughed. "Nein. Fully automatic belt-fed .50-caliber centerfire. Six hundred rounds a minute."

Rictus blinked. "Holy hell."

"Ja. Und zat large barrel contraption underneas is zuh grenade launcher."

"An automatic .50? Aren't the grenades sorta redundant?"

Serge chuckled. "It is overkill. But it is zer first design, and zey ver...over-ensusiastic, perhaps."

Rictus rubbed his chin. "This thing'd be tough for me to lift, and if I tried to fire it, I'm sure it'd knock me on my butt. Surely it's gotta be hard to shoot even for a human."

Serge shrugged. "It is heavy, so it kicks less zan you sink. Ve haf only five of zees so far; ve cannot mass-produce zem. But I haf five men who handle zem reasonably vell."

"What is 'reasonably well'?"

Serge shrugged again. "Zey blow zuh bloody hell out of everysing in zuh general direction zuh barrel is pointing."

"Except what they're aiming at, I presume."

Another shrug.

Rictus looked the gun up and down. "Well, it's a real piece o' work, Serge, I gotta hand you that. Sure, take these, too. Might be good for punchin' holes in stuff or scarin' off monsters if that's necessary. What do you call this thing, anyway?"

Serge looked uncomfortable and rubbed at his bald dome. "Vell...zuh boys downstairs did give it a little nickname..."

"Which is?"

"Zey call it zuh Bonebreaker," Serge admitted.

Rictus chewed his lip. "Nice." He sat back. "Serge, I hope I'm not making the worst mistake of my life. I'm sure you understand, and I know you don't want another war...I don't want to kill my fellow bones. I want to send them home."

Serge nodded. "Zuh sought had occurred to me, Rictus. But I haf no intention of shooting bones, und my men vill listen to me. Ve do not suffer under zis mob rule you call democracy, und zuh Bürgermeister of Portsmous has more power zan your 'mayor.' My men know zat if zey breach orders, I can punish zem."

Rictus said, "I trust your judgment, then. Hopefully, intimidation will be enough to send the bones home. When do you think we can set out?"

"I believe by tomorrow evening. Ve vill consult zuh scholars in zuh morning, pack, und go."

Rictus raised a floating eyebrow. "That quick? Good. We might even find Phoney before he reaches this Valley."

"Ja. Get some sleep now, Rictus. I'll show you your room."

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Annie was relieved when Dietrich left. The man made her uncomfortable.

She threw down her hiking pack at the end of the straw bed and kicked off her shoes.

A bed, she thought. That'll be nice.

In spite of the smell, Annie performed her usual custom of taking in the night air before sleeping. Shoeless, she stepped onto the boardwalk outside her door. No streetlights, she thought. Pitch black. She looked up, hoping to see the stars, but was disappointed. It was a cloudy night.

What am I doing here? Coming had been a mistake. If Rictus's plans went well, they'd stop Phoney and turn right around and come back. Annie had expected they would find Fone Bone and at least check on him, make sure he was okay. She wondered for a moment if she shouldn't have gone with Phoney's party instead.

Callused hands reached out of the darkness and grabbed her. One covered her mouth before she could scream, and another yanked her out of the cone of light emanating from her open door. Her captors pulled her around the corner of the building. Judging by the feeling of mass in front of her and the dry, cracked skin crawling across her clothes, at least two people were manhandling her. She knew this guess was right when two harsh voices broke the town's creaking silence--

"Vot haf ve here, eh?" one of the voices asked. "Von of za bones, ja?"

"Ja," a deeper, more menacing voice answered. A hand clutched her face and its finger bit into her cheek. "Ah, zuh sleek skin." The hand pinched harder. "Glossy vite, no pores. Vaterproof." She felt whiskers brush her face as the man put his mouth right next to her auditory membrane: "You know vhat a gut pair of patent lezer soos you'd make, girlie?" His hot, wet breath blew on her with a mixed odor of gin, tobacco, and rotten teeth.

"How you know it a girl?" the other voice asked. "It got no tits."

"It vearing a skirt, Dummkopf." The hands kneaded and pinched at the flesh on her chest and stomach under her windbreaker. The calluses on those hands rasped against her skin. She kicked at those hands, but in vain. She was pinned. "Ja, see ist fighting, eh? See don't vant to be a nice chacket. You know zey alvays take zuh girl bones, girly? Skin is softer, and it best if you skinned alife."

"Ja," the other voice agreed, and a rough hand snatched at one of her floating eyebrows. She gasped in shock and terror as a white-hot pain shot into her left eye. "After Darton, know vhat zey do? Zey find bones und hang zem by zuh eyebrows. Zuh bones scream und kick und sink to zuh ground ofer several days. Und visout zuh charge betveen zuh brows und zuh head, zey haf no sense of direction. Zey run into each ozer and moan und cry like babies."

"Yank harder. Zee if zuh eyebrow come off."

The pain increased and stretched from her eye, through her brain, and clear to the back of her head. She tried to yell for help, but the hand over her mouth allowed only a pathetic, wet retch.

The pain stopped and she heard a deep "Oof!" The hands on her body released and she fell to the ground, flat on her face in rough gravel. She ran a hand over her eyebrows to make sure they were still there.

Annie backed toward the wall and put up her fists. A shape was moving in front of her, and it was moving rapidly. It appeared to be another man, and he was delivering well-placed punches, kicks, and chops to the ones who had accosted her. She saw him grab one of them and swing him around, and she heard the solid smack of the villain's head against the wall beside her, followed by the thump and rustle of his body hitting the dirt. She ran to the stunned man and kicked him several times in the face to make sure he stayed down. She ignored the pain shooting into her feet and kicked until he stopped moving.

That done, Annie turned to run, but two strong hands scooped her up and one of them clamped over her mouth. It seemed her rescue was short-lived, for the rescuer himself was some new terror.

The figure who held her burst into her room, snatched up her pack, doused her lamp, and then ran back into the night, shutting the door behind.

My shoes, Annie thought. If she could escape, she could probably run along the boardwalk, but sharp rocks in the street would slow her down if she had to go there.

She felt heavy cloth enclose her body. She realized her captor was wearing a long coat and had shoved her under it to keep her unseen. He still had a hand around her mouth, but that meant her limbs were free. She began pummeling her feet against his hip and, though she could not swing any punches in her awkward position, she grabbed at the skin around his abdomen and pinched hard. She felt his strong stomach muscles clench as he grunted.

His pace quickened and he fumbled his other arm under his coat, trying to pry her fingers from his flesh. Every time he pulled her hand away, she managed to get her hand free and pinch somewhere else. He showed no sign of dropping her, but she would leave him with some nasty welts.

She felt a pressure against her back and heard a creak of rusty metal as he shoved through a door and slammed it behind. He threw her out from under his coat and she landed on a soft, straw-filled mattress. Annie sucked in her breath to shriek--

The hand clamped over her mouth again.

"Please not to make noise, Miss Annie," a smooth voice said.

She gazed into the dark, trying to make out the outline of his face. The hand released its pressure on her mouth.

"Dietrich?"

"Ja. Von moment, please."

His face moved back into the surrounding shadows. A curtain rustled as Dietrich pulled it. A match snitched as he lit it, and the orange glow captured the lines of his face as he pulled the glass from a lamp and lit the wick.

That done, he turned back to her. She looked again into his face and was again startled at the complexity of his eyes. In the lamplight, they shimmered wetly. They were black circles in colored frames, surrounded by white delicately brushed with gossamer strands of red. She had thought before that Dietrich's dark-on-dark eyes were a deep brown, but she now suspected they were blue. Yes--when he turned his head slightly, she could see through the transparent film over the black center, and the blue of the iris stood out as it captured the light.

"I apologize for my townspeople," Dietrich said, sitting in a creaky wooden chair near the door. "Angry memories last long, and goodvill is soon forgotten. Zer are some who remember zuh Bonevar, and zer are even some who still sink on zuh Darton Massacre, zo all from zat time are long dead."

"Would they have really made me into shoes or a jacket?" Annie asked.

"Nein. Boneskin is illegal; ver vould zey vear it? Zey vould have done little besides beat you. But I sought it best to take you here so zey do not know ver you are and come back vis friends."

"You scared me to death."

"Zey vould haf done more zan scare you."

She sat back on the bed and let her breathing calm and her heart slow. "You left my shoes behind," she said.

"I get zem in morning, ja? No more prowlers zen."

She swallowed. It seemed a new nervousness was rousing in her stomach. "Why did you come back?" she asked.

He looked embarrassed. "I return because I have forgot to tell you, Miss Bone, zat it is not safe to leave your room at night."

She managed a smile. "Thank you, Dietrich. I'm sorry I pinched you."

He chuckled. "Like Spartan boy and fox in story, ja? Sink not on it."

Annie's eyes moved around the room. The walls were of dark wood and appeared unfinished, and Annie anticipated splinters if she ran her hand over anything. The furniture consisted of the low-slung bed, the hand-made chair in which Dietrich sat, and the small table with the lamp. Another door across from the entrance was apparently a closet.

There was a cracked painting on the wall above Dietrich's head, half shaded from the lamplight. Annie tilted her head to get a look at it, and she sucked in her breath.

Dietrich, looking to where her gaze was focused, said, "Ah, ja. Tintoretto. Zat is his 'Origin of zuh Milky Vay.' A copy, of course, but a fair von. Do you know his vork, Miss Bone?"

She shook her head. The painting was busy and confusing, and she doubted she would understand the subject matter even if Dietrich explained it. There was an unclothed human at the center, but Annie couldn't tell whether it was male or female. A number of other figures surrounded it, including winged children and some muscular person in the upper right...no, she couldn't understand it at all.

She twisted her mouth and said, "I've just not seen a painting like that for quite a while. Bone art is going through a 'stripe phase.'"

Dietrich looked confused.

"Let's just say it's a sort of painting only an art critic could love," Annie said. She sighed. "I don't think there's a bone in all Boneville who can do art like the humans can. Not anymore. It's pathetic."

Dietrich crossed his arms. "Don't say zat, Miss Bone. I'm sure zuh bones have many fine talents, and ve depend on you for technology just as you depend on us for art."

"Yeah," Annie muttered, "but if we were worth much, I don't think we'd run off into the desert after that awful Phoney Bone."

Dietrich smiled. "Surely not every bone is following Phoney. After all, you and Rictus are here."

"No," she said, "not every bone is going." She scrunched her floating eyebrows. "I know Father August Bone always opposes Phoney's schemes, but he also admonishes everybody for the way they treat Phoney when they uncover one of Phoney's scams. And Rabbi Moshe Bone says much the same thing."

"You see?" Dietrich said. "Good bones. Bones vis whom I vould proudly ride zuh Chariot. But now, Miss Annie, I sink it best if ve get some sleep. You vill take zuh bed, of course. I sleep on zuh floor." He moved to the lamp and blew over its mouth. The room plunged into darkness.

Annie was alone in a strange room, in the dark, with a large human.

"Pleasant dreams," Dietrich said somewhere in front of her.

**Next: Into the Desert**


	6. Into the Desert

The Chronicles of Fone Bone Oathbreaker

D. G. D. Davidson

BONE is © 2006 by Jeff Smith.

**Chapter 6: Into the Desert**

_The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands._

--Proverbs 30.27

Someone was shaking Annie awake.

She blinked to bring herself to a groggy consciousness, but seeing Dietrich's face looming over her shocked her fully awake.

Sunlight streamed through a gap in the curtain on Dietrich's window, illuminating a floating sea of dust motes. The warm light redeemed some of the small room's stark crudity. Bluebirds whistled somewhere outside and the enclosed room smelled of sap. Annie sat up, rubbing her eyes. "What day is it?"

"Today," he said. He was slipping on a belt with a large leather holster. He pulled a gun out of the closet that looked like a bone-made double-barreled shotgun sawed off to about fourteen inches. Its stock was gone, but in its place was a makeshift pistol grip held in place largely by baling twine. Dietrich loaded a couple of shells and slipped the gun into its holster.

"You vant I get your soos now, Miss Annie?"

Groggy as she was, she took a moment to interpret his accented Bonish. "Uh...yes. Yes, I need them."

"Fine. Come vis me, please, and zen ve vill meet Rictus and Serge at zuh map room."

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Annie's shoes squished, but she figured she would just have to bear it. In anticipation of the desert journey, she had changed her skirt for a pair of khaki cargo shorts, but she still wore her damp windbreaker. The walk to the map room was short, and though the early morning air was fresh and cool, the sun glowed in a clear sky and its rays were hot. The beaten earth of Portsmouth's streets was damp, and an odor of manure rose from it.

The map room was a small hut in an obscure corner of the citadel. Its sole occupant was an eccentric, elderly human with a long white beard. He was dressed in grungy shirtsleeves, and he constantly waved his hands as if he didn't know what else to do with them. Serge and Rictus were already there when Annie and Dietrich arrived.

"Anysing on zuh ozer side of zuh desert?" Serge asked.

The old man bobbed his head and waved his hands as he walked back and forth across the room in front of a wall full of pigeonholes holding maps. He stopped at one, grabbed a piece of paper, and yanked. Several maps fell out onto the floor, but he ignored them and took the one he wanted over to a low table where he unrolled it.

"Zer is legend," the old man said, "zat zuh Big Johnson Bone tell to human trappers of valley across desert."

"Why would Big Johnson have been speaking to humans?" Annie asked.

Serge glanced at her. "Even in Big Johnson's day, zer vas more amiable interaction betveen human and bone zan you might sink. Go on, Heinrich."

The old man pointed at an imaginative set of crags drawn on the map in the midst of a blank patch labeled Desert. "Big Johnson known as great liar, but if legend true, zen Valley is here, to souseast." He placed a compass on the map, took a bearing, scribbled it on a piece of paper, and handed it to Serge. "Map may be inaccurate. Can do no better."

Serge looked at the bearing. "Good enough," he said. "A mountain range as big as zuh von you've got drawn zer ought to be easy to find, even if zuh directions are off."

"Big Johnson great liar, and map may be inaccurate," the old man repeated.

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After they finished in the map room, they met up with a group of fifty human men. Serge walked around and shook hands with them all.

They were heavily armed, and as Annie had suspected they would be, they were carrying illegal bone-made guns. Annie didn't care for guns, and she especially didn't care for guns made for the express purpose of killing bones. Besides the submachine guns and assault rifles, four of the men had some exaggerated monstrosities strapped on their backs. They looked like cannons.

She frowned when she saw one of the men straining to hand a similar weapon to Dietrich. Dietrich took it and easily swung it onto his back. He looked ridiculous. The butt of the huge gun sticking out beside his thigh and the barrel reaching over his head made him look skinny.

Dietrich strapped a machete on his belt and with that, his arsenal was apparently complete. Serge carried a bone-made submachine gun that looked too small in his thick hands, and someone handed him a revolver and a curious long dagger with a small gun barrel extending from the hilt and lying against the flat of the blade. He showed it to Rictus. "Human veapon. Hunting dagger vis single bullet, ja? Foolish, but old men like us need our eccentricities."

"I agree," Rictus said.

Toward evening, the party loaded onto flatboats and rowed across the Rolling Bone. Annie felt her excitement and nervousness growing as the opposite shore grew closer. When they disembarked, they met some of the herdsmen.

To Annie's surprise, these men dressed differently from the people in town: they wore loose, colorful wraps and had small bones stuck through their noses; Annie was unaware that Portsmouth was the administrative center for three distinct cultures, each with its own customs and dialects. There were the agriculturists who worked the fields outside Portsmouth, the fishermen who plied the waters around the atolls known as the Sandwich Lands, and the herders who ran their cows at the desert edge.

These herdsmen had what looked to be over fifty camels. Annie had seen camels in pictures but had never expected to see one up close. The beasts were every bit as intimidating as the horses.

One of the herdsmen bowed to Serge. "Watered, fed, and packed as you requested, Herr Bürgermeister." Annie noticed the man's accent was closer to that of Boneville than was Serge's or Dietrich's.

Serge bowed in return. "Excellent. If zer is no ado, ve ride out."

The camels could kneel, making them easier to mount. Serge and Rictus shared a mount, and when Dietrich climbed on his camel, he asked, "Care to ride vis me, Miss Annie?"

"What about your fiancée?" Annie asked in turn, crossing her arms.

Dietrich shook his head. "Ve humans do not force our vomen on journeys like zis. Zer place is at home vis zuh children and zuh old men."

That wasn't what Annie meant, but she wasn't going to start an argument. She tried to climb on behind Dietrich, but he stopped her and pointed to the bulk of the rifle on his back.

"Best to ride in front, Miss Annie."

She allowed him to help her up. He took the reins and, in so doing, placed his large, muscular arms on either side of her. She took a deep breath to calm herself. She was not going to be nervous around him.

She regretted the deep breath, though. She still had to get used to his smell.

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"Feierabend!"

It had been a long night consisting of little but travel. The humans dismounted and took the heavier packs off the camels. Annie slid to the ground and walked around to remove the stiffness from her legs.

Serge laid down a few waterskins. "Ve had better build a fire, Rictus. Ve sould cook vile ve haf zuh luxury."

"Yeah," Rictus said, wincing. He was walking with his legs bowed out. He caught Annie's eye and winked. "I'm too old for this."

The men gathered dried sage and built a fire. It sent up an acrid smoke, but the humans huddled around the blaze and fried bacon as the stars faded in the sallow light of dawn. Annie stood some distance from the others and laid out her sleeping bag. Looking up, she could see the morning star shining clear on the eastern horizon.

"Vhen ve get in zuh deep desert, no more vood," Serge commented. "Zhen we eat cold food, ja? During day, ve are too hot. At night, too cold. Such is zuh desert."

Annie joined the group and looked around for Dietrich. She didn't see him, so she sat next to Rictus. The men passed around a large bottle of amber liquid.

As it came to Annie, she smelled it.

"Mister Serge!" she admonished. "This is alcohol."

"Ja," Serge agreed. "You get two svallows, Annie Bone."

Rictus moved to take the bottle but Annie held on. "Serge," she said again, "we're in a desert. You shouldn't give your men hard liquor. It will dehydrate them."

Rictus tried to joke, "If she doesn't want hers, Serge, how about making mine a double?"

Serge grinned back. "I believe you said you vanted half rations, right, Rictus?"

"Not on the booze!"

The men laughed.

Annie glared. She tried one more time. "Serge, this could be used for medicinal purposes--"

Serge reached across Rictus's lap and gently seized the bottle. "Miss Annie, it is medicinal. Morale medicine."

The men's guffaws got louder.

Annie let go and Serge tipped a small splash into Rictus's awaiting tin cup.

"Ah, yer killin' me, Serge!" Rictus complained.

Serge poured a much larger dose for himself, slammed it back, and put the bottle away. Warming their innards with the rotgut, some of the men began to belt out lurid songs in off-key voices. Annie, her frown deepening with every suggestive word and sour note, decided it was bedtime. She left the circle and was surprised to see, a short distance away on a low, rocky rise, a lone figure silhouetted against the pale sky that warned of the impending sun. She walked toward him and, as she expected, found he was Dietrich, kneeling toward the sunrise and mumbling over his prayer beads.

He looked up and smiled.

"How come you're not drinking and carousing with the others?" Annie asked.

Dietrich shrugged, slipped the beads into his pocket, and said, "I rarely drink anysing stronger zan small beer."

Annie opened her mouth to respond, but a roar of mayhem interrupted: deep growls, crashing, men cursing; huge, purple, flabby, corpulent shapes bounded down upon the camp from all sides. Each had on its stunted face a long, serrated horn, gold in color. Behind the horn was a single, hideous, blood-shot eye englobing a roving black pupil, and a red crust rimmed the eye as if it were infected. Along the creatures' shapeless bodies, vestigial wings were visible, now shortened into useless, waving stubs. But more horrible still, on either side of their mouths, they had small, delicate fingers like empurpled babies' hands. The monsters opened wide, fang-rimmed mouths and screamed. Foamy saliva gushed from between their teeth.

"People-eaters!" someone shouted.

"Bone-suckers!" Annie cried.

"Ach!"

Annie's auditory membranes filled with the deafening rattle of Bonebreakers. The monsters' roars of rage transformed into squeals of pain. Dietrich shoved Annie behind him and pulled the sawed-off from his belt. He emptied both barrels rapidly, one into the eye of one monster and one into the gibbering maw of another. Still, the bone-suckers had him and Annie surrounded and cut off from the others, and Dietrich's Bonebreaker was lying with his pack on the other side of camp.

"Protect zuh camels!" someone shouted over the din.

A monster lunged for Annie. Dietrich snatched her up and crushed her against his chest. With no alternative, he drew the machete from his belt and hacked at the beast. The knotted, warty hide was tough, but it gave way to a hard swipe, revealing the creature's liquid innards. Putrid-smelling blood and lymph gushed over Annie and Dietrich as he slashed.

Dietrich aimed for the creatures' eyes, but to do that he had to avoid the sharp serrations on those metallic horns. The bone-suckers lunged, attempting to bite or gouge; Dietrich had to move fast to avoid mortal wounds, and several times he barely pulled Annie away from the slavering jaws of the monsters.

Annie had frozen when the bone-suckers appeared and had not struggled when Dietrich picked her up. Now that she rode in the crook of his arm with his bicep pressing against the small of her back like a hard river cobble and his sinewy chest tensing under her hand, she began to regain her senses. The fetid blood washing over her brought her back sharply. She wondered for a moment whether any of the blood was his or hers, but she decided it was not. It was too watery, and she felt no pain, and Dietrich was moving too fast and striking too accurately to be seriously wounded.

She looked up at him. She could see some of the bone-suckers around him, behind his head, but her gaze didn't leave his face. He was covered in red grime that washed from his cheeks in runnels of his own sweat, and his squarish jaw was clenched tight. The taut muscles of his face pushed against his skin. His lips curled up in a smile and revealed a glimmering curve of white teeth. As she looked in his face, she was not afraid, and she found it so strange not to be afraid that the lack of fear itself caused her a tremor of trepidation. Yet still, clasped in his arm, she felt safe, and she knew, somehow, that he would win. He was going to kill those bone-suckers and he was going to kill them with his machete. He wasn't going to let them get to her.

Time slowed. Her eyes didn't move. The scene behind his face changed many times, but that grim expression of violent glee remained. Once he tucked his own head near hers and she felt his other arm cross her back as his hot breath blew on her cheek, and then the world turned upside down. The sand was in view, and just as quickly it was beneath them again as Dietrich came out of the roll and continued his endless hacking.

At last, it was almost over. The final bone-sucker was upon them. Dietrich, now a little slower, made a move for the eye. The machete entered the dark pupil and the eye gushed clear fluid, but the blade wedged in the socket and Dietrich did not pull back before the creature turned its head and tore a ragged gash down the length of his upper arm.

Dietrich's hand slid off the weapon. He fell flat on his back with his chest heaving. He opened his left arm and let Annie roll from his grasp.

With knees shaking, she stood. Now that there was luxury for such things, she felt the aftermath of fear and excitement, though she remembered neither emotion. She looked around and saw six bone-suckers lying on the ground, their eyes punctured or their bodies full of hideous long gaps like wounded mouths drooling blood. Near the camp were at least ten more bone-suckers, mangled by bullets. The men were holding their rifles, frowning ugly frowns, and babbling in the Portsmouth language with some Bonish thrown in.

"I sought zey only ate purple people."

"Nein, Dummkopf. Zey are purple and zey eat people."

Serge wiped blood from his brow and said, "Christian, report."

"Ve're mostly here," Christian replied, "but Heimie is dead."

"Dammit."

Annie knelt by Dietrich's side. The cut on his arm was long and jagged, but it wasn't deep. She ripped the cuffs off her shorts to make a bandage and as she began applying it, Dietrich looked at her and said, "Ve brought medical kits, Miss Bone."

She looked at her ruined shorts. "Oh."

"But sank you." Dietrich stood. Annie tried to press him back down, but he ignored her and, with a new stoop in his shoulders, walked around the hideous carcasses to rejoin the others. Annie followed.

Rictus ran to where the camels were. As he had expected, none of the camels was just standing around. Finding the ones that had run off would be a pain, but two camels were now nothing but chewed-up meat and much of the supplies around them were broken and trampled. "They got two of the camels," Rictus called, "and a lot of the goods are trashed."

Serge stood with hands on hips, surveying the men. "Vell, anyvon feel like sleeping now?" He paused only a moment. "I sought not. Find zose camels. Zen ve go on. Pack vhatever is salvageable. Leave zuh dead."

"What?" Annie protested. She stared up at him. "Can't you even bury Heimie?"

Serge looked down at Annie with an expression that said he was at the end of his patience. "Annie Bone, if ve bury him, zuh scavengers dig him up anyvay, ja? Zis is easier for us und zem. Now pack up or ve leave you."

Serge walked away from her and she stared at his back, thinking, They're not bones. They're humans. They have different ways, different customs. But that's not what she was feeling.

Serge joined Rictus by the torn camel carcasses and placed a heavy hand on Rictus's shoulder.

"I'm sorry," Rictus said without looking up. "I've led you off on this wild goose chase. I got your man killed."

"Nein," Serge replied. "I am Bürgermeister. Zees men do not follow you. Zey follow me. I am zuh only von who can make mistakes here. I could haf told you to go to hell. Instead, I come vis you, and I bring zem."

"Alright," Rictus said, "but I'm still sorry."

"Not as much as I," Serge answered. "Heimie had a vife und five children." He removed the hand from Rictus's shoulder. "Ve go on, ja? But first ve need camels. Come help."

Dietrich picked up his clunky Bonebreaker from beside the stores. He looked at it glumly. "I sould not have left zis here," he said. "If I had it, I may have killed zuh people-eaters faster and perhaps saved Heimie."

"You can't know that," Annie said. "That huge thing might have slowed you down. A bone-sucker could have jumped us from behind and we would be dead with Heimie."

Dietrich nodded. "Perhaps." He slung the giant rifle over his shoulder, wincing. "But ve cannot know. Vill you help me find zuh camels?"

"First, I treat that arm," Annie said.

"Nein."

Annie pointed to the wound. Rivulets of blood trickled down Dietrich's arm and spread in distributaries over his hand, forming a sticky red mass above his knuckles.

"Vell," he said, "I suppose leaving a blood trail is no good."

"Sit," Annie commanded. He obeyed, and she ran to the supplies to find the medical kit. She came back shortly and dressed his arm.

He winced as she applied alcohol to his cut, but he made no sound.

She stopped when he winced. "It's funny," she said, "how men like you take a cutting-up without complaint and shrink from a little medicine."

"Medicine does not give me battle-fever," he answered.

"Battle-fever? Is that what you call it? Is that why you were smiling while you fought?"

He looked at her, but she couldn't read his expression. He looked away again before saying, "I don't vant to talk about it."

She finished the swab, placed gauze on his arm, and started wrapping. "You like fighting, and you think that makes your Chariot unhappy."

He turned his head further so she was looking at his dark hair and one ear and couldn't see his face.

"I don't vant to talk about it," he said.

88888

For six days and six nights, the bones had been traveling through the desert. During the day, it was wickedly hot. At night, it was terribly cold. Phoney thought most would have turned around and gone home by this time, but none had. It was as if some mysterious force drove them.

They had two jeeps carrying extra food and water. The gas was holding up. Phoney knew they'd have to ditch the vehicles at Daren Gard, but that was no problem. The drivers rotated, and they drove agonizingly slow to keep pace with all the bones who were walking. Yet with all the hassles, no one turned around and walked back.

Not that there weren't grumblers. Jeanne and Twyla Bone, who had come along for reasons Phoney couldn't fathom, typically sat in their broiling tent during the day, too hot to sleep, and complained to each other.

"Ugh," Twyla said as she peered into her camp mirror, "this desert heat is making my hair go limp. Can you believe there's nowhere to plug in a curling iron out here?"

"Do you think Fone will remember me?" Jeanne asked.

"Can I borrow your mascara?" Twyla asked in turn. "I'm out."

"Oh, I stopped using it," Jeanne said. "I heard a rumor they test it on animals."

Twyla turned to her and said, "What? You mean your lashes do that by themselves? That is, like, so unfair!"

"Don't hate me 'cause I'm gorgeous."

The languid day wore on. The bones lay in what shade they could find. They sweltered, drank water, and awaited sundown, when the merciless heat would cease.

The sun tipped low and the sky, in anticipation of the coming night, yellowed in the west in preparation for its bloom into orange and subsequent death in bruised purples, blues, and blacks. Those few bones who crept out of their tents seeking relief, but unable to find it, watched the sun's course with hand-shaded eyes and tremulous anticipation.

Bartleby and Smiley lay in the scant shade of one of the rusty jeeps. Smiley could sleep anywhere and under any condition, but Bartleby's sleep, like everyone else's, was light, consisting more of a half-dreaming delirium than true slumber. But Bartleby was normally a nocturnal creature. Daytime light and heat did not oppress his sleep as it did the others. His dreams were fitful not because of the hot sun, but because of the hot passions that brought water trickling through his teeth and out between his lips, which he concealed by wiping his face with a hairy wrist.

Whenever his weighted lids fell across his bulbous eyes, the same vision arose and took on clarity before he could push it away: Dolly Bone's frightened, pain-lanced face as Bartleby dug his teeth deep into her abdomen and ripped--

He would jerk his head and snap awake and cover his eyes with his claws and moan. She was his pal, he told himself. His pal.

It was easier at night, ironically, although it was then that his hunting instincts were awake. For then, at least, he was moving, and he was surrounded by witnesses, and he could keep his mind on other things. But while the sun rolled in its slow course across the blue vault, there was nothing to do but lie beside the jeep, shift in the sand as the shadows moved, and dream.

At night, Dolly taunted him. She would run up to him and tug his fur or hang on his neck, and then she would run away again. As she ran, something deep in his gut would say chase! and he would sometimes flinch or dig a rear paw into the sand before he would catch himself and control his breathing. He would glance up at Smiley, usually by his side, and see the tall bone frown as if he were mulling over something; with a guilty heat, Bartleby would fear he was found out. Oftentimes, Floyd would be nearby, and Bartleby would cast a guilty glance at him as well, and would always find the skinny barber's hard, piercing eyes staring right back.

Just last night, Dolly ran up to Bartleby, giggled, and leapt onto his back. She tugged hard at his ears and said, "What big ears you have, Mister Bartleby."

"The better to hear you with," Bartleby whispered.

As he said it, he felt a hand dig deep into his fur and clench. It wasn't a petting hand. He looked up, expecting to see Smiley, but it was Floyd the Barber. Floyd wasn't looking at Bartleby this time. He was looking straight ahead as he walked, but he had his hand dug into Bartleby's fur and clenched in warning. They walked that way for some time, the dust rising in small clouds behind their passing feet.

This day, as the sun moved on toward evening, Bartleby awoke from another fitful dream. His sweat had made sand stick to his fur, and his breathing was hard. He arose and stretched the sore shoulder on which he had been lying. He couldn't take it anymore. He couldn't. It was time to have it out, come what may. He was resolved, and the resolution brought peace or at least a good imitation. He was sick at heart, but he felt the cure was coming. He glanced down at Smiley, who had a trickle of drool trailing from his own mouth. His tiny blue hat was low over his eyes.

Let him sleep, Bartleby thought.

88888

Dolly couldn't sleep much during the day. Bartleby found her playing in the sand, trying to build a castle without water.

"Psst," Bartleby hissed, "Dolly."

She looked up.

"Come play," he said.

He led her away from the camp and onto a dune. He could feel the glow in his eyes increasing as his excitement mounted.

"Where are we going, Mister Bartleby?" Dolly Bone asked.

"Up here," Bartleby said. "Just up here."

Bartleby felt his heart slamming against his ribs as if it was trying to get out. Oh, yes. Yes. He would do it this time. He knew it was wrong, but he would do it anyway. He wanted it so bad.

He stood on the top of the sand hill and breathed in the sharp, twilit air. He felt the inside of his mouth grow terribly wet. He heard the shuffle, scrape, and fall of sand behind him as Dolly ascended the slope.

I want to eat her. She's asking for it. The vision appeared in his mind again--Dolly's abdomen clenched between his teeth and the twinge of excitement as her flesh gave way and he pulled and pulled, sucking her warm blood down his throat as she writhed, each spasm growing weaker than the last.

Dolly's head appeared over the rim of the dune and her black eyes glistened. Soft strands of golden hair fluttered around her face, refugees from the hair-band holding her ponytail.

"Mister Bartleby?"

He turned around and faced her. He drooled now. Long strands of foamy spit dangled from his jaw. He wanted her. He no longer tried to hide it.

Bartleby opened his mouth. The matted fur on his face parted. His jaws spread wide, revealing the cone-like projections of his teeth, behind which his pink tongue writhed in a growing pool of saliva.

Dolly stood there. She looked awed, maybe confused, or maybe afraid.

"What...a big mouth you have, Mister Bartleby," she whispered.

Mouth still open to reveal its nightmarish contents, drool still running down the fur on his lower face in ropy strands, Bartleby nodded. He approached her slowly and his gesticulating tongue seemed to speak of its own while the rest of his mouth remained poised in that gaping grin.

"The better," he hissed, "the better..."

A quick twang and a whistle. A shaft of wood adorned with feathers sprouted from Bartleby's mouth. Gurgling and tossing his head, Bartleby stumbled backwards.

Floyd Bone, bow in hand, rose up behind Dolly. "The better to shoot cha in, ya smoochin' sonovabitch!"

Dolly screamed and threw her hands over her eyes. Floyd scooped her into his arms. Cradling her there, he whispered, "It's all right now, Dolly. Shhhhh, it's all right now."

"Mister Bartleby," she sobbed. "Mister Bartleby!"

Bartleby stumbled backwards. The arrow's broadhead point had cut his tongue in half, sliced through his windpipe, and stuck against the solid bones of his neck. He couldn't breathe, and every attempt moved the arrow and caused it to tear at the tissues of his throat. Blood ran into his lungs and a small geyser of red shot from his mouth as he tried to cough.

He flung himself away from Floyd and Dolly and tumbled down the other side of the dune. The sands tumbled with him and after he landed, he was half-buried.

Like a cool blanket, he thought.

Sunset came. The sky burned red, blood red, red as the pool forming around Bartleby's head. Bartleby was able to watch as the sun, distorted by refracted light, set over the desert and the sky darkened.

He raised his eyes and looked into the night sky. The misty arch of the Milky Way was visible, and a bright red point, not twinkling, was directly before him.

Ah stars, he thought, ah stars. As death spread its mantle over him, his passions cooled. His heart ached, but he was glad. Dolly was safe. They were all safe. He couldn't hurt them now. He had been weak. He had fallen. But at least Dolly was safe.

Dolly, he thought. My friend. My pal.

His gaze focused again on the heavens and that bright point. Ah stars, his mind whispered, if you really rule our fates as the sages say, keep Dolly safe. Keep Smiley safe. Keep them all safe.

He considered adding the traditional rat creature prayer before death asking a heavenly psychopomp to guide him to the place of his ancestors, but he did not. He didn't feel he deserved it now.

Instead, he remembered a little poem Smiley had taught him, and he recited it as he gazed into space.

Star light, star bright...

The sky dimmed. Blackness crept into the edges of his vision and the sounds of the night wind and the smells of the desert grew remote as if the world were walking away from him and leaving him somewhere empty and cold.

First star I see tonight...

The blackness drew fingers across his eyes. The desert disappeared. The stars faded as well, leaving only that one red point.

I wish...I wish I may...I...

A shroud drew across Bartleby's mind. The red of his eyes settled to embers and then went out, leaving behind gray, opaque orbs like unpolished diamonds. The wind came up and his fur shuddered, but Bartleby could no longer feel it. The sand burrowed into his fur and hissed against his skin.

One thought ended all the others, and then it followed the rest of them into eternity:

They're safe.

Bartleby would not know the horror his own spilt blood would cause. He would not see the bones screaming in fear and discharging their weapons into the night. He would see neither Dolly's blood-red cheeks nor her mouth gaping wide like a chasm. He would not hear her piercing screams. He would not know that by morning there would be nothing left of his own body except a coagulating stain and a few bits of hair. His last thought was, They're safe, and that was enough for him.

But there are scavengers in the deep desert, and there are hunters as well. Around Bartleby's body, the sand bubbled and rippled as if it had become liquid. A thick, ribbed stalk rose out of the billowing sand like the tentacle of some great creature of the deep oceans. The stalk was bleached white either from sun or from darkness or from both. It ended in a round opening rimmed with sharp teeth, and it probed blindly at Bartleby's body until it came to his mouth and tasted the blood there. Then the cautious fondling ended and the teeth tore away most of Bartleby's lower jaw. Other stalks joined in, rising out of the sand on all sides. They ripped large pieces of the rat creature's flesh and sent them unchewed down their flexible gullets. Nauseating ripples and bulges pulsed down their lengths as their muscular necks pushed the red morsels deep into the sand toward their unimaginable guts. How deep their bodies ran, and whether these necks and mouths were individual organisms or part of some larger, tangled, writhing mass living deep in some fissure in the bedrock, no one can say. But the herdsmen of the southern desert fear these monsters. They call them sand maggots, and the maggots are hunters of both the living and the dead.

"Shhhh," Floyd whispered, holding Dolly's face close to his own. "Shhhh, girl. You're safe now."

Dolly's shrieks had turned to weeping. Her small arms wrapped around Floyd's thin neck and her body shuddered. "Mister Bartleby," she moaned.

Floyd understood people. He knew more about Boneville than anyone else in it. He knew of Rictus's embezzlement before Phoney produced the letter. He knew of T. Bone's cocaine ring before the police began to suspect. Floyd Bone knew Boneville, and he had many more sources and contacts than the gossips in his barbershop.

And Floyd knew Dolly Bone. Dolly's father had skipped town and her mother was an addict--one of T. Bone's regular customers--who moved between the shelters and the streets, and who supported her habit by working in what was quaintly known as Boneville's "Kiss 'n' Tell" district. Like similar children, Dolly had nowhere to go. There was no orphanage and no children's services. The city government--or at least the taxpayers--didn't want to deal with such things, and the nearly empty churches didn't have the money. A few pious religionists would take abandoned kids, and there were a few foster homes, but they were few, and they were full. Floyd had taken Dolly under his wing a few years ago.

He didn't take her into his home. No, he couldn't. Talk would get around if a forty-four-year-old, unmarried bone took in a girl of six. But he gave her free haircuts and fed her, and he made sure she had safe places to sleep at night, and he made sure everybody knew Floyd would personally kick some serious butt if anyone molested her or gave her drugs or anything like that. And nobody wanted to mess with Floyd.

Floyd knew people, and Floyd knew Dolly Bone.

But right now, Floyd found himself in a curious circumstance. He could interpret Dolly's wet mutterings into his shoulder--"Mister Bartleby, Mister Bartleby"--in two ways. Was she shocked at the rat creature's betrayal or sad about his death? Floyd found to his bewilderment that he didn't know, and as a result, he didn't know how to console this girl he thought he understood so well; he merely patted the back of her head, rocked her, and shushed soothingly in her ear, to no avail.

As Floyd held her there, he heard sounds of chaos rising from the bone camp. People were shouting, and then came the explosive bark of firearms.

"I gotta set cha down, Dolly." Floyd placed the girl on the ground and nocked an arrow. He crouched, examining the ground between them and the camp. His night vision was better than most, but he still couldn't make out anything.

"Climb on my shoulders, Dolly. Quick."

Still trembling and with tears still flowing down her face, Dolly obeyed.

Running low with Dolly on his back, Floyd made his way down the hill. When he reached the bottom, he found a scene of horror.

"Sand maggots," he whispered.

The bones had gathered into a circle around the jeeps. They had their weapons out and were firing rapidly. Because of the bad light, few of the bullets connected with anything. Some bones had flashlights, and they fumbled with these along with their guns, trying to mark out targets, but the maggots moved rapidly.

Floyd stared, bewildered, and then looked down at his bow. His favorite toy was suddenly useless.

88888

T. Bone stuck a cigarette in his mouth, emptied his rifle into the nearest writhing maggot horde, and then went to his luggage. He had his real guns, his favorite guns, tucked away. But he yanked them out now. It was time to get down to business.

He threw on a vest covered in extended 9-mm clips. Then he pulled out a couple of tec-9s with laser sights and got ready to rock 'n' roll.

Much as he hated to, he flicked his shades up so he could see better, and then he cut loose.

Yeah, this was the real sweat. Those smoochers blew apart. Wherever he pointed those little red dots, the maggots exploded in fountains of white pus. It was downright fun.

Clips empty. Damn.

He dropped the empties in the sand and reloaded. Ooh, more fun.

T. Bone kept on the move, careful not to get in the way of other people's guns. There was that idiot Funny Bone blazing away with his old clunker of a rifle. That moron couldn't hit a brick wall three feet in front of him. There were those crazies Mastoid and Tibia, looking like they were having more fun than T. Bone was. Obviously, they had extra guns in their luggage, too, and they were apparently taking the opportunity to run through all of them without reloading. Those were about the only bones who could intimidate T. Bone, not because they were tough but because they were nuts. He gave them a wide berth.

There was Ish Bone pumping away with a shotgun. Judging by the effect it had, the idiot had his piece loaded with birdshot. Well, better luck next time, Ish. Loser.

Two more clips empty. Drop 'em. Reload. Party.

And there was that mouth-hole, Floyd. Floyd the barber. And that little brat was with him, and of course the brat was screaming. T. Bone hated kids, and he especially hated noisy kids. Couldn't Floyd shut that little lip up? And of course Floyd had his precious, I'm-a-big-man-'cause-I-don't-hunt-with-guns bow, and he looked just about out of arrows. Not too effective a weapon when sand maggots are surrounding you, is it, Floyd? Yeah, who's the big man now?

Smoochin' sweat, can't he shut that kid up?

Empty again. They empty fast. Eject. Reload. Happy trails.

Now he came upon their high-and-mighty leader, Phoney Bone. T. Bone had nothing but contempt for Phoney, but he looked forward to the opportunity to bust a cap in some human's mouth without getting busted for it.

Phoney was standing there holding that stupid old knife like he didn't know what it was for. Apparently, he didn't want to dive in and hack around. Not quite like old Big Johnson, is he?

Phoney spotted T. Bone and yelled, "T. Bone! Quick! Gimme a gun!"

T. Bone sneered, slung one of the tec-9s on his vest, and reached into his belt to yank out the .22 Saturday Night Special. He threw it at Phoney's feet. It was a piece of junk anyway; T. Bone only kept it because it was the gun he used the first time he killed a bone. It wasn't much, but T. Bone loaded it with hot-loaded hollowpoints, so it could get the job done if Phoney had the teeth to shoot it and it didn't blow up in his face.

Phoney picked up the weapon like he thought it would bite him and stood there, staring at it. Smoochin' idiot.

It took some time, but the bones drove the maggots back. T. Bone fired a few shots after the retreating monsters. "Yeah, and don' come back, smoochas!" He spat out the stub of his cigarette.

"All right," a deep voice said, "who's packin' illegal heat?"

T. Bone spun around. It was, of course, Floyd Bone the meddler. That little lip was still with him, but at least she had finally shut the smooch up.

T. Bone held up the guns. "If not for these, you might be dead. Lay off, hair boy."

Floyd spat in the sand. Dolly hid behind his legs, her peeking eyes surrounded by lines of fright.

T. Bone watched her, then made a false lunge and yelled "Boo!" Dolly yelped and jumped behind Floyd.

In an instant, Floyd had the bow raised and an arrow nocked. The arrow's tip hovered an inch from T. Bone's nose.

"Ya don' do that," Floyd said. It wasn't really a command. More like a statement.

T. Bone still had the guns up and pointed in the air to either side. He knew he couldn't bring them into play faster than Floyd could let go of that arrow, and even if he could, he would probably get the arrow in his face anyway.

"You know I'm a hunter," Floyd said, "and I know you're just plain dirt." He pulled back and released the tension on the bowstring. "And I think you'd make good huntin', Tiberius Bone."

T. Bone didn't move, but he sneered. "Someday you're gonna point that thing at the wrong bone, Floyd, and I'm gonna be there, and I'm gonna laugh at your smoochin' dead butt, and then, damn, no more Floyds." His sneer grew bigger. "'Course, don' look like there gonna be no more o' them, anyhow." Dolly was peeking at him again. T. Bone nodded toward her. "Cute girl." Then he turned and walked back toward his luggage.

Smiley ran up to Floyd in a panic. Relief crossed his face for a moment when he saw Dolly. "Oh good, she's safe!" he exclaimed. "Dolly, Floyd, have you seen Bartleby?"

Floyd looked down at the girl, back at Smiley Bone.

"Sorry, Smiley," his quiet voice said. "Maggots got 'im."

Smiley's mouth turned down and he fell to the sand. He pulled off his hat and laid it over his heart. "Oh..."

Dolly walked up to him. "Do you need a hug, Smiley?"

"I think I do, Miss Dolly."

Dolly put her arms around his neck and they cried together. Floyd kept a respectful distance.

**Next: Prodigal Son**


	7. Prodigal Son

The Chronicles of Fone Bone Oathbreaker

D. G. D. Davidson

BONE is © 2006 by Jeff Smith.

**Chapter 7: Prodigal Son**

_You may give them your love but not your thoughts.  
For they have their own thoughts.  
You may house their bodies but not their souls,  
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams._

--Kahlil Gibran, _The Prophet,_ "On Children"

One of the jeeps was T. Bone's. He had considered bringing his monster truck with the fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror, the glowing skull on the trailer hitch, and the bumper sticker that read, "Kiss the girls and make them cry," but he had decided against it. He didn't want his favorite rig scratched, so he had brought his beat-up Willie instead.

T. Bone lounged in the narrow strip of shade next to his jeep and smoked, waiting like the rest of the bones for the sun to go down. They were near the end of the journey now. The jagged purple mountains marking the boundary of Phoney's fabled Valley loomed over the camp, and the rolling sand of the deep desert had given way to a hardpan cut by narrow ravines. T. Bone didn't see why they didn't just finish the trip during the day and get out of the heat and under the trees.

The perpetually sweaty Funny Bone walked over and sat next to him.

"How ya doin', Funny?" T. Bone asked.

"I...I shakin' real bad, T. Bone," Funny complained, wiping a grimy sleeve across his brow.

"You get what I ask you for?" T. Bone asked.

"Yeah, yeah," Funny said through his adenoids. "I always do, don' I? Funny's got it, man."

T. Bone sucked at the cigarette. "Yeah, Funny sure as hell got it."

"And you don' ask me where I get it," Funny said.

"I sure as hell don't."

"I just tell you what I know and you don' ask me how I know."

"So spill it," T. Bone said.

"First, you got it?" Funny asked. His voice was whinier than usual.

T. Bone reached into a pocket and pulled out a small bag of white powder. "Th' cure for what ails you. Pure sweat."

"No sweat?"

"No sweat. It's the good stuff. Enough to smooch up alla Boneville, or enough for you for a week."

Funny reached for the bag. T. Bone pulled it away.

"Ah," Funny complained, "I promise--"

"Shut up. I said spill it and you spill it."

"Okay," Funny said, wheezing. "Okay, you was right. Floyd Bone shot the rat."

"Thought so. What about my other guess?"

"Yeah, the rat got the janitor, Gunder. Floyd knew it, but don' ask me how. And he figured the rat wanted Dolly, so he brought the girl on the trip for bait."

T. Bone smiled, showing a couple of gold teeth. "Tha's good, Funny Bone," T. Bone said. "Tha's real fine. Think you can spread that around?"

Funny shook his head. "No one'll buy it, T. Bone. That's Floyd smoochin' Bone. Everybody knows he clean as a whistle."

"Last I checked," T. Bone said, sucking hard on the cigarette, "a whistle's somethin' you spit in. You pass th' word, you get th' dope. You make it subtle-like, and I know you know how."

Funny nodded. "Yeah, yeah. I kin do it, T. Bone. Jus' gimme a hit now. Gimme an edge."

"Take the edge off, you mean," T. Bone answered, throwing away the spent cigarette. He opened the bag and held it out. "Dig in. Just a little, now. I'm watchin' ya."

Funny pushed a begrimed finger into the bag and pulled out a tiny pile of the powder. Guarding it so it wouldn't blow away in the wind, he brought it to his nose and rubbed it on the underside. It mixed with his perspiration and began absorbing through his olfactory membrane.

A broad smile settled on Funny's face.

"Good sweat?" T. Bone asked.

"Good sweat," Funny said.

T. Bone wrapped the bag tight and shoved it back in his pack. "Get to it, Funny my man."

Somebody called, "Pack up, people! Let's move!"

T. Bone clapped a hand on Funny's shoulder and stood.

88888

Thorn had recovered quickly. She had used her dreaming powers to heal, though she had been unable to manipulate the universe as she had during the delivery. She remembered that meditation only with difficulty; she knew she had gone deep, and she knew she had done very, very powerful magic, but her memories of the birth were fragmentary and jumbled.

Thorn was practicing her horsemanship. She rode at a full gallop down the field of the Veni-yan training grounds, swinging her ancestral sword as she went, slicing in half the melons set on posts on either side of her. She was still uncomfortable on the horse, used as she was to Gran'ma's cows, but her aim with the blade was flawless.

So concentrated was she on lopping simulated heads that she didn't notice when Fone Bone and their son walked onto the field. She reached the end of the row, turned, and reined in the horse, startled.

"Say hello to your mother, Ishmael," Fone Bone said.

Ishmael looked up at Thorn out of his roving, bloodshot eyes. His sucker-mouth pulled in air with a loud hiss, and then his voice, guttural, coarse, and somehow foul, said, "Hello to your mother, Ishmael."

Fone Bone laughed.

It had been only a little less than three weeks since Ishmael's birth, but he had grown. He towered over his father. He was bigger than most humans now, with broad, hunched shoulders and thick arms.

Probably traits he gets from his great grandfather, Thorn thought with a twinge of bitterness.

Ishmael knuckle-walked like an ape, and he was a rapid climber. Though Thorn and her advisors tried to keep him hidden, Fone Bone took him everywhere, and Ishmael often roved alone over the city. People would spot him climbing Tarsil's tower on the outside, clinging to the narrow clefts between the stones with his razor-sharp but dexterous claws. As the sun lowered at night, worried mothers snatched their playing children from the streets and dragged them indoors, all the time looking about the darkening silhouette of the city's shingled roofs and low pagodas, fearful that a hulking shape might appear as a stark shadow outlined in monstrous form against the purpling sky. As the people huddled in terror in their beds, they would sometimes hear the clump of heavy feet upon their roofs as Ishmael romped through Atheia, for he never slept and the night was his natural domain. Whispered rumors abounded regarding his terrible origins and his mysterious designs, and they were often as vulgar as the truth. Since Ishmael's advent, in the short span of three weeks, the name Harvestar had ceased to be a word of blessing and had become a term of ridicule, and wizened old women often passed the forbidding tower at the city's center and spat, and they made the sign of the Evil Eye. Old men sitting in the city gate said, "Dark times are upon us, and a monster from the primordial days has come forth from the Dreaming to punish us for our sins," and they nodded their hoary heads at one another, and they too cursed the name Harvestar.

Thorn had removed Fone Bone from his public duties, but that didn't keep him out of the public eye. Thorn was aware of her mortally wounded popularity, but she knew that, while the people disliked her, they hated Bone: they knew this beastly apparition was his son, and most suspected it was hers as well.

She looked down at Fone Bone, her face blank. You ruined my life, she thought at him. Why couldn't you have left me alone? It took a great effort to remember that she was the one who asked him to stay, and that she was the one who initiated the fatal act that brought this creature into being.

Bone didn't know people hated and feared him, and he didn't care. He was obsessed with his offspring. Fone Bone was given to monomania, and it did not much matter what the object of his obsession was--a book, Thorn, or their son--as long as he had something. When he was preoccupied with an external object, he was content, and his latest preoccupation would always remove the last from its cherished place. Thorn had thrust out Moby Dick, and now Ishmael had thrust out Thorn.

"What do you want, Fone Bone?" Thorn asked.

"To say hello," Bone answered, smiling. "I don't think you've seen your own son in days."

Thorn pushed a lock of hair behind her ear, bit her lip, and said, "Hello, Ishmael." She didn't look at her son when she said it. "Now Bone, I need to get back to my practice. I'm very busy--"

Fone Bone laughed again. He had laughed a good deal since Ishmael's birth, and it seemed that idiot grin never left his face. "Practicing war?" he asked. "Practicing violence? I remember you an' Gran'ma havin' a big argument over those things."

"War and violence bad," Ishmael observed in his deep, wet voice.

Bone continued, "Surely you can take a break. Maybe you'd like to go for a walk with us, or--"

"Fone Bone!" Thorn said, and then closed her eyes and bit her lip again to even her tone. "No. Thank you. Some of us have kingdoms to run."

Fone Bone looked crestfallen.

Thorn swung a leg over the saddle and dismounted. "Ishmael," she said, still not looking at him, "why don't you go play on the other side of the field for a moment? Mommy and Daddy have something to discuss."

"Go play," Ishmael said, and he loped on all fours across the grass.

Thorn crossed her arms and glared at Fone Bone. Neither spoke.

When the silence was more than uncomfortable, Bone fidgeted, crossed his hands behind his back and said bashfully, "Uh...what did you want to talk about, Thorn?"

Thorn let her breath out, but still glared, teeth chewing away at the inside of her mouth.

Bone rubbed at his head, coughed, and said, "Um, Thorn...I've kinda been wantin' to talk to you, too. I mean, I was thinkin' that...er...well, since we have a kid and all, uh, shouldn't we talk, say, about gettin' married?"

Thorn closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Fone Bone, look, this was amusing for a while, but it's not anymore."

"...What? What isn't...? I...I don't understand."

Thorn lowered her arms and said, "It's time we got certain things straight. I am a human being, Fone Bone, and you aren't."

Bone's eyebrows came together. "But we have a son!"

Thorn gestured to the end of the field where Ishmael was and shouted, "I didn't want him!" Her words ended with a trace of echo and she realized she had been too loud. Ishmael looked up.

Thorn glanced at Ishmael, turned back to Bone, and hissed in a loud whisper, "Jeez, Fone Bone! I didn't want to have your kid! Do you know what this has done to me? Do you know people hate me and hate you, and they hate him even more? I didn't want...I didn't mean for..." She waved her arms in a meaningless gesture. "The very idea! It grosses me out!"

Bone's shoulders slumped. Tears appeared in his eyes.

"Oh, for goodness sake, Fone Bone..."

"B-but we kissed!" he said. "How...how can you say--"

"It didn't mean that to me!" Thorn said, still in a fierce stage whisper.

"What did it mean?"

"It didn't mean anything!"

Bone stared at her, looked at the ground. He straightened his shoulders and wiped the tears off his face. "Well, fine," he said. "That's just fine."

He walked across the field and took his son's wrist. "Come on, Ishmael, let's go home now."

"Mama?" Ishmael asked.

"No," Bone said. "Mama's busy."

88888

Cedric was in the kitchen; cooking helped him think. He had a good fire stoked in the oven and the smell of his latest dish filled the small room with a brazen aroma.

A hard, insistent knocking came from the thick adobe wall by the arched entryway. Cedric turned.

General Thintook was leaning there. He ran a thick hand through his bright red beard and asked, "Master Cedric?"

"Yes?"

"I would speak with you." Thintook stepped in. "A fine facility, Master Cedric. More cozy, and warmer, I suppose, than your rooftop kitchen."

"Blazing hot is what it is," Cedric answered, "but Pawanian food is still out of favor, so my rooftop kitchen is out of business. However, I frequently cook for the court, and you wouldn't believe the finicky eating I witness: all the Northerners want plain, dull, hearty food, and the Atheians cry constantly, 'More pepper! More garlic! More leeks!' Only we Pawans appreciate"--he picked up a bundle of dried rue and smelled it with a broad smile on his thick lips--"the real succulent pleasures."

Thintook waved the comment off. "One can't expect these soft, decadent people to have our sophistication of culture."

Cedric peered into the oven. "Is there anything from the home country milord would like me to cook? Reekbutter, perhaps, or some raunchmuffins?" He grabbed a paddle and pulled a smoking dish from the mouth of the oven.

"No, no," Thintook answered, but then sniffed the fumes wafting through the kitchen. "Although...what is that you have there?"

Cedric thumped the pie on the table. "Quiche. It was Smiley Bone's recipe. Care for a slice?"

"A small slice."

Cedric complied, knifing out a sliver of quiche and scooping it onto a board. Thintook, incautious of the quiche's heat, took a bite.

He scowled. "It's bland."

"That's what I thought. Would you like some stinky-cheese on top?"

"Please."

Cedric opened the covered dish and let Thintook help himself. He was dismayed at the portion Thintook scooped out; stinky-cheese was by no means cheap.

Thintook again bit into the dish, getting flecks of egg in his beard. "Better."

"Surely Lord Thintook did not come to see me only to sample the delicacies of our Fatherland?"

"No," Thintook said, pushing the board away and standing. "No, I'm afraid I did not. I wish I could say I had, but rumors are spreading, and I have witnessed something...strange, and I want to know what you know."

Cedric busied himself at the table, stacking his used dishes. "About what, General?"

"About this legend that Queen Thorn has had the bone creature's bastard son."

A clay bowl skidded off the table and shattered on the floor. After the crash, it was silent but for the last tinkling of the settling sherds.

"I'd best go get a broom," Cedric said.

"Answer me first."

Cedric pulled his hood low over his eyes. He fumbled at his nose-ring. "I...I cannot speak of palace matters, General Thintook. I am an advisor to Her Majesty, and there are royal--"

"Faugh!" Thintook shouted, slamming a fist onto the table. "I saw, with my own eyes, the bone creature carrying some sort of monstrous demon! Is this blasphemy the child of the queen or not?"

Cedric's hands slipped to his side. "I...I cannot..."

Thintook's eyes narrowed. "You are a Dreaming Master," he said. "I know you are an honest man, and a good man who will not reveal the secrets of his sovereign. I respect that. But your emotions betray you, Master. I have known too many liars to be easily fooled, and though I cannot see your eyes through the hood you wear, your gestures and your tone of voice say all that your words will not."

Cedric placed a gnarled hand to his face.

Thintook sat down again and mused, "In Pawa, she and the bone both would be burnt with fire for this violence against the natural order, and the child would be drowned. Are the Atheians really so uncivilized as to tolerate this madness? And you, Master, are you content with this state of affairs? Has your Pawan blood grown thin with a diet of bland maxims and blander quiche?"

Cedric turned away. "I should get that broom."

Thintook grabbed his arm. "And there is another rumor floating about this city. They say the young girl who sells the prayer beads is possessed, and that she prophesied the coming of a new Locust."

Cedric looked up. "You seem to know a lot of rumors, General."

"I have my sources, Master, and I'm sure you have yours."

Cedric pulled his arm away. "A citizen brought what he remembered of the prophecy to the Dreaming Masters. We have been analyzing it since. We know the girl who made the prophecy; she is a strong dreamer, and were she of the royal line, there is little doubt that she would be a powerful Veni-yan-cari. As it is, she will be a Master herself one day--if she survives."

Thintook raised a bushy eyebrow. "Survives?"

"That prophecy was not her only one, though it was her most sensational. The fits take her often now, and she wastes away. She was under the care of one of our order, but that one has recently...sickened and died. The girl's prophecies continue."

"What does she say?" Thintook asked.

"The words 'doom,' 'Locust,' and 'oath breaker' are frequent."

"What do the Masters make of her prophecies?"

Cedric shook his head. "We do not know. This notion of a new Locust seems to be nonsense. The Locust was one of the great spirits who coagulated out of the stuff of the Dreaming when the world was new. The Dreaming is no longer so pliable, and there are no new spirits."

"What about human spirits?" Thintook asked. "They form from the Dreaming, don't they?"

Cedric shook his head. "It is not the same. The human soul is a nexus of the Dreaming captured in mortal flesh. At death, the soul returns to the Dreaming without losing the imprint of its experiences in the mortal world. But the Locust, the Raven, the Coyote, the Stork--all these are the Dreaming in its totality, and yet differentiated into unique persons. It is not the same."

Thintook scowled. "I never understood these things, Master, and I don't see the difference. The little prophetess, you say, is a powerful dreamer. The queen, I know, is a powerful dreamer. Is it not possible for a dreamer to be so powerful as to have attributes of one or more of the great spirits? Fractions of their power? Shadows of their essence?"

Cedric tugged at his beard. "I...I don't know. I've not heard of such things."

"Might not this bastard monster be such a dreamer?"

Cedric shook his head. "If he, why not anyone? No mortal can be Lord of the Locusts, General."

Thintook rose and turned to the door. "The prophetess spoke of the Locust arising from the Unnatural, and I can think of nothing as unnatural as what I saw cradled in the bone creature's arms, Master. Mark my words--that monster must die."

"Is it your intention to bring public scandal on the House of Harvestar, General? I know this must appear to you as a personal wrong."

Thintook considered, and said, "It seems the House of Harvestar is doing an adequate job of creating its own public scandals. No, I will do nothing."

Thintook stepped through the doorway. His lieutenant, Astynax, was waiting for him around the corner.

Thintook eyed his second grimly. "You were right," he said.

"My ability to sift rumors, as you have noted in the past, milord, is impeccable," Astynax answered. "Did you filch me any liquor from the kitchen?"

"Dry up," Thintook said. "Let's return to our quarters. Much as I hate it, we'll be remaining in the city, I think. A feeling in my gut says our services will be necessary soon."

88888

Fone Bone walked with Ishmael at twilight through the Eastern Mountains. The path was often steep and strewn with boulders, and Ishmael lifted his father over the rougher spots. They traveled for some time in silence, and their destination was unclear. Fone Bone thought from time to time that the mountains looked strangely intact considering the two major disruptions they had suffered at the coming of the Locust, but he didn't question it. He walked with his beloved son, enjoying his company and enjoying the feeling of the cool air and the sight of the purple sunset in the west.

My son, he thought, my son. The idea still thrilled him. Bone had always been luckless with women and had never seriously imagined the joys of fatherhood would be his own.

For an hour or more, they were silent, but then Ishmael spoke, and his voice was surprisingly free of rumbling grunts.

"I'm hungry, Father."

"You eat only every two days, Ishmael, and you eat only blood. But you ate yesterday, remember?"

"That cow's blood was a little thin, I think," Ishmael replied.

"We have no blood here," Fone Bone said.

"We have you and me, Father," Ishmael answered. "That is blood enough."

They walked on. The air grew cooler, and Fone Bone smelled the wild scent of pine needles, sweet clover, and wood smoke drifting out of the Valley below them. To the northwest, he saw curls of black rising from the villages dotting the forest. He thought there was an awful lot of villages and wondered how the people could have rebuilt the towns so quickly after the rat creatures burned them, but he didn't question it. He only walked on in silence with his son.

After some time, Ishmael spoke again and Fone Bone was again surprised at the clarity of his voice. "I'm thirsty, Father."

"You drink only every two days, Ishmael, and you drink only blood. But you drank yesterday, remember?"

"That cow was a bit dry, I think," Ishmael replied.

"We have no blood here," Fone Bone said.

"We have you and me, Father," Ishmael answered. "That is blood enough."

Fone Bone and Ishmael stood before the ancient rat creature temple. The grotesque statuary gaped at them with frowning mouths, and the carven, iconic ears jutted into the air like spikes. The place was a ruin, but it had not lost its power. A silence settled, the faint whisper of the evening breeze ceased, and the smells of the valley ceased, and there was only the temple. Fone Bone thought his olfactory membrane detected a faint hint of the nameless sacrifices that had once taken place here when the rat creatures raised their gnarled, clawed hands to their strange gods and beat drums of skin in time to the pulsing of the Earth's hum. Smoke--more sinister in its tincture than that which rose from the Valley's evening fires--touched Fone Bone's nose, and it carried with it the vulgar, metallic scent of red blood cut fresh from the vein. What blood once stained these pitted rocks? What flesh roasted on these crumbling altars? What formless god did the rising fumes appease? And was that now, as Fone Bone listened with even his breath held for assurance of silence, a throbbing of drums made faint by gulfs of time, and the animal shouts of frenzied, half-delirious worshippers? Or was it only imagination?

"Do you hear it, Father?" Ishmael asked.

"I hear it."

"Do you smell it?"

"I smell it."

"Do you understand?"

Fone Bone shook his head.

Ishmael touched a stone. It was square and stood separate from the nearby jumbled heaps of rock, suggesting it sat in its original place. "The Dreaming," he said, "is delicate. Do you know how the world was formed, my father? No? Very well, I will tell. A great god, give him any name you like, went willingly to the other gods, or maybe he--she, perhaps?--was killed in battle. It matters little. But in any case, the ancient god was slain. They took half the god and placed it above to form the sky, and half below to form the sea."

"The Enuma Elish," Fone Bone said.

Ishmael smiled, and on his leech-like mouth, the expression was blasphemously grim. "If you like. But my point is this, Father. The world was made in blood, and blood sustains it." He ran a hand over the stone, caressing it. "There is a tree called Yggdrasil, and it connects the parts of the threefold world like a golden chain. Its servants must from time to time splash its roots with blood to keep it healthy."

"What are you saying?" Fone Bone asked. "The world subsists on some barbaric system of apotropaic magic?"

Ishmael smiled again. "Don't flip words at me out of your high school anthropology class to sound wiser than you are, Father. The key is balance. The Dreaming is a delicate thing; balance is so easily lost, and only one thing can restore it."

"The Crown of Horns?"

"A magical trinket. It served its purpose and is gone. But what it did in its passing is what is always needed to balance the Dreaming. It killed."

Fone Bone felt a nervous pit growing in his stomach. "What are you saying, Ishmael?"

Ishmael raised a single finger tipped with a scythe-like talon. He pointed it at Fone Bone's heart and said two words:

"Oath breaker."

Fone Bone swallowed. "But...can one broken promise unbalance the Dreaming?"

"The right promise can. One sin leads to another, you know. The world rested on your shoulders for some months and you held it well. But in the end, you let it drop, and you didn't even know."

A transition happened, too smooth and quick for Fone Bone to detect it, but now he was lying on the rock Ishmael had been caressing. His arms were spread out, cruciform, and when he tried to move, he found his wrists and ankles tied. Ishmael stood over him, holding up one of those scythe-like fingers.

"Blood," Ishmael said.

"Ishmael?" Bone asked.

"Blood," Ishmael repeated.

"If I've messed up so badly, can't I fix it somehow?"

Ishmael smiled again, and from Bone's low angle, the resulting visage was even more hideous. "There is one fix now, my father."

"How...how can you know these things?" Bone whispered. "You're only an infant."

"I know many things, Father. For instance, I know my name, and it holds the key to both our destinies." Ishmael opened his arms in imitation of Bone's posture and shouted in a deep, rasping voice:

"Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael; because the Lord hath heard thy affliction. And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him."

"No," Bone said, shaking his head while sweat rolled down his neck. "That's not why. That's not you. That's not the Ishmael..."

"That is the only Ishmael!" Ishmael shouted. "Look at me!" He gestured to his deformed body. "This is your doing, Father! Stop looking with your heart and use your eyes!"

Bone looked at his son for the first time, and as he did, he wept. "Oh, Ishmael, my son, my son. I didn't know..."

"Didn't know," Ishmael scoffed. "There is much you don't know, Father. The bones are asleep. They don't realize their own power. Do you think it a trifle that you speak to animals as easily as to your own kind? Do you think it was for no reason that your mere appearance in Deren Gard awoke the Dragon? Do you think it nothing that your soul contained the Locust and you did not go mad?"

Ishmael held his hands in front of his face and lightning flashed between them. "The bones are Dreaming Masters, but they sleep, surrounded by their comforts, their mammon, and their tools of war!" He opened his arms wide again. "Behold the offspring of the Veni-yan-cari and a bone! I am a creature of the Dreaming--and a monster of Chaos! In what has occurred already, and now in me, the prophecy is being fulfilled:

"There shall be a confusion also in many places, and the fire shall be oft sent out again, and the wild beasts shall change their places, and menstruous women shall bring forth monsters."

"Second Esdras," Fone Bone whispered.

"Right again, Father! It is a prophecy of the end of time, and its fulfillment has come. I am the consequence of your sin. Do you have the courage to right this wrong?"

Tears ran down Fone Bone's face.

Ishmael bent his unspeakable mouth low over Bone's nose. "You are dreaming, Father," he whispered, "and I control the dream. Here, I am my true self. In the pathetic mortal flesh you sired on my mother, I am only a fraction of what I am here, but my powers there are growing. You are going to wake up soon, and when you do, you are going to go to the balcony overlooking the tower garden, and you will see something there, and then you will do what you must do as we play out the coming game. But I want you to remember this dream, Father, and I want you to remember what I am about to say and do most of all. First, I will say this: I am bringing you a present from your home country. When it comes, I want you to recognize it and know that I, through the Dreaming powers that are a mixture of my mother's and your own, am the one who brought it. I began bringing it from the moment you and she first conceived me, and I control it, and with it I will destroy this Valley."

Ishmael stood and backed away. "Now I want you to see this. I want you to know what I am, Father. I want you to know what you have made. I am no human. I am no bone. I am Lord of the Locusts."

Behind Ishmael, a horde of locusts rose from the ground and swarmed into the air as a dark, writhing funnel cloud. Ishmael changed. The mouth in his face grew, and it sucked in the air--no, not the air only, but the very substance of all that surrounded him. The mouth engulfed Ishmael's head until it was a great, swirling vortex. Ishmael's body stretched and became amorphous like a writhing shadow. The locusts surrounded him in winding spirals like an insane, living tornado. Fone Bone screamed and twisted his hands against the ropes as Ishmael's fierce cackles pounded through his skull and the locusts drove at Bone's body, pummeling him and echoing the laughter in their wings, intensifying it. And then Bone couldn't hear, couldn't breathe...

And then he awoke, lifting his face from the pillow on which he had been lying, and which had been suffocating him. He rubbed at his eyes. Why was he still in bed in the middle of the day? What time was it? What was that dream...?

He sat up, and as the wooziness of fading sleep left him, he remembered, and his skin chilled and cold sweat rolled down his body.

88888

Thorn paced in the enclosed garden. She tugged her lip, pushed her hair, tapped a foot, and then continued pacing. She did this until three hooded figures appeared in the arched entryway.

High above her, on the fourth floor, Lieutenant Astynax peered out a window. He spit-shined a small brass trumped and put it to his ear. A Pawanian witch had magicked this trumped some years ago so it could pick up sounds clearly from a great distance. Astynax had often used it to acquire information for General Thintook and for the last several days, at the general's command, Astynax had been keeping a close eye and a close ear on Her Majesty and Her Majesty's confidants.

Thintook suspected coming bloodshed and thought to ingratiate himself to Atheia by remaining for a while as a sort of warrior-protector, but that was a poor, though imaginative, excuse. Thintook, Astynax knew, was smitten. Queen Thorn's betrayal was more than a personal insult and a violation of hospitality. It was more, even, than a degradation of the already disreputable House of Harvestar. It was a bitter disappointment, and Astynax knew Thintook would spend his few remaining days in the tower considering how he might get away with breaching traditional Pawanian marriage etiquette and how he might get rid of that promiscuous Fun Bone, which would both eliminate a rival and remove what he perceived to be a terrible burden to the queen.

While Thintook entertained such noble thoughts, he set his lieutenant to shameless spying, in which Astynax engaged heartily. It was his third favorite pastime behind drinking and wenching, respectively.

As the three hooded figures entered, Thorn gestured to two of them and said, "Leave us." They bowed and slipped back into the tower. The third figure pulled back his hood.

Astynax was disappointed. He didn't recognize the handsome young man with the shaggy blond hair and upturned nose, but he still saw the possibility of scandal.

Nonchalant, eyes half-closed, Tom leaned against the building and said, "You called, Your Highness?"

She closed her eyes a moment and said as if confessing, "Yes. I did." She tugged her lip, realized she was doing it, and dropped her hand. "I...I'm sorry. I know you're working hard on the palace and..." She rubbed at her temple. "Walk with me," Thorn said.

They strolled through the garden. Thorn chewed her lip and stared at the ground. Tom watched her, hands clasped behind his back. They paced for a few minutes in silence.

"When I was young," Thorn began, "I could talk to my grandmother until I found out she'd been lying to me about my parents and about my living with the dragons when I was little. But then I could talk to Fone Bone."

"The little guy with the--"

"Tom, don't," Thorn said. "I'm not in the mood for your insults."

Tom looked startled. He opened his mouth, but paused a moment before saying, "I apologize, Your Majesty."

"I shouldn't have called you here, Tom," Thorn said, her attitude now distant. "It was a mistake. I just felt...I needed to talk to someone, someone...I don't know, someone I can trust. Someone human."

Tom raised an eyebrow. "You can talk to me," he assured her. He stopped walking. Thorn walked a few paces more before realizing he'd stopped, and she turned her head to look at him.

"I don't spread rumors," Tom said. "But I don't need to. There's rumors enough as it is. Do you know what some of the men say at the worksite? They say you've been having an affair with the bone and that you've even had his kid."

"Do you believe it?" Thorn asked.

"Not really. Rumors can go pretty crazy."

Thorn's stern look faltered. Her lower lip trembled, she clasped her face in her hands, and she sank to one knee as she said, "Oh...Tom..."

"Thorn?" He went to her and knelt beside her. Hesitating only a moment, he put his strong arms around her and she sobbed into his shoulder.

"Hello," Astynax mumbled to himself. Now what do you call this? It's not a love triangle...a love square?

"It's not true," Thorn choked. "It's...not."

"Of course it's not," Tom whispered.

Embracing one another, neither noticed as Ishmael knuckle-walked onto the balcony overlooking the garden. Seeing the two figures there among the flowerbeds, Ishmael hunkered down below the high balustrade and peered at them.

Thorn wiped her eyes and stood. Tom stood with her but kept his hands on her shoulders. "I don't know how it happened," Thorn said. "I know that sounds ridiculous, but I don't. And I don't know what to do. I...I can't talk to him anymore. I can't even look at him. I'm afraid of him. I'm afraid if I even touch him, it will happen again. I..." More tears threatened to pour from her eyes, but she fought them, and she won.

"You had his kid?" Tom whispered.

Biting her lip, she nodded. She looked in his face, but she didn't see the revulsion she expected.

"Don't be afraid," Tom said, and he embraced her again. Thorn paused, but then she hugged him back.

"I'm so afraid of him," Thorn whispered.

"I won't let him get to you," Tom answered.

"It's not just him," Thorn moaned. "It's that thing, our...our...I can't even say it! I can't believe it came from me, can't believe..." Her body shook and he held her tighter. "I hate him!" Thorn cried out. "I hate him! I hate my own son!"

"Jackpot," hissed Astynax.

Ishmael slumped to the balcony's marble floor and tears rolled out of his own hideous eyes. "Hate me?" he whispered. "She...hate me?" He threw his head back and uttered a long, loud howl of despair. Thorn and Tom, startled, leapt apart and stared at the balcony as Ishmael thrust his meaty hands through the decorative pillars of the balustrade like a prisoner pleading through the bars of his cell. "Mama!" Ishmael cried. "Mama! No hate me, Mama!"

Tom had heard the rumors but had never even glimpsed the creature on the city's skyline. He clasped Thorn again to his chest to protect her while he clenched his teeth in horror. Thorn pushed him away.

"Mama!" Ishmael cried again. He flung his arms apart, smashing the stone balustrade with a loud crack. The dust of the shattered stone hung around his body like a grisly halo.

"Bloody stars," Astynax muttered, able to hear the violence below his window but unable to see it.

Fone Bone, rubbing sleep from his eyes, sprinted through the double doors to the balcony and stopped. He saw his son on his knees, pleading, and he saw Thorn and Tom in the garden, staring at the deformed boy with dismay and horror. Not long ago, the sight of those two together would have been enough to fill Bone with anger and despair, but now he only shook his head in disgust and turned to his son.

"Ishmael," he said.

"She hate me!" Ishmael cried, turning to his father and holding out his long, sharp claws in supplication. "She hate me!"

"I don't hate you, Ishmael," Fone Bone said. He opened his arms. "Come to me. Come to your father."

Ishmael, weeping large, hot tears, loped toward Fone Bone, but then hesitated. He looked down at Bone with his thick chest heaving, and he blinked as if trying to call up some forgotten memory.

"Come to me," Fone Bone repeated, arms spread out, cruciform.

Ishmael opened his round mouth to show his translucent, needle-like teeth. "I am learning what I am!" Ishmael shouted, and lightning flashed between his upraised fingers. He leapt from the balcony.

Tom started, seeing an attack eminent, and his eyes shot about for a weapon. Thorn likewise stood her ground and her hand moved toward the blade by her side, though she was uncertain if she could raise her sword against her own offspring, repulsive and hateful as he may be. But Ishmael turned his back on his mother and the young man and leapt high in the air, swinging his long arms to catch an overhanging gargoyle. He hauled himself onto the sculpture, and then crawled over the tower's surface until he was able to jump onto a nearby roof.

Bone collapsed off the balcony and into the tulip bed. "Ishmael!" he shouted. "Come back!" He jumped to his feet, grabbed the lip of the balcony, and pulled himself up.

"Fone Bone," Thorn called.

Bone turned and saw Thorn standing beside Tom. He moved his eyes back and forth between the two of them. "No, Thorn," he said, and then he turned and ran through the door.

88888

The city of Atheia was a maze. Panting, Fone Bone ran, trying to keep Ishmael in view as the boy leapt from roof to roof. The streets were like narrow tunnels. The buildings leaned toward one another and in some spots almost touched. Ishmael would appear in fleeting glimpses above, hunched over gables, leaning from the tops of short turrets, or clambering over the numerous pagoda-like projections. It was as if he was leading Fone Bone on, but if he was, then why was he running at all?

Bone swerved around several corners. Rats dodged out from under his feet. Peasants glared at him, spat, or cursed as he ran by. Heedless of the danger, he kept running. He stepped in several things he didn't want to think about, and pondered for a moment the practicality Atheians showed in wearing shoes.

At last, he reached what he'd been looking for. A narrow pinnacle built into the corner of a block of close-packed structures, this squat stone tower held a winding staircase leading to the roofs. Some parts of the city had much traffic and commerce on the tops of buildings where businesses could rent space above the general stink and sweltering heat. People could access the rooftops through several enclosed staircases around the city, and rope bridges, street-spanning arches, or perilous wooden planks offered passage from one block of nestled buildings to another.

Bone was breathing hard and streaming with sweat by the time he reached the tower's top, but he didn't stop running. Now that his view was unobstructed, he could make out Ishmael's form as it ducked behind one of Atheia's upthrust spires where the buildings clustered against the city wall. Fone Bone went into a sprint, balancing on the shingled apex of a gabled roof.

"Ishmael!" he yelled. "Ishmael!"

Ishmael's form reappeared. Bone saw his son turn and look at him. Fone Bone, still running, held out his arms. "Ishmael!" he called again.

Ishmael shook his head.

Bone's foot slipped. His mouth opened in a silent gasp as he slid down the steep, lichen-encrusted shingles. He groaned as his feet went over the lip of the roof and his left hand, flailing, caught a stone rain gutter. He hung by his fingertips, broad feet swaying over a muddy, manure-stained alley four stories below.

Trying to catch his breath and keep his grip, he gurgled as he fought to bend his left elbow enough to grab the gutter's lip with his right hand. Winded from the run and disheartened by Thorn's betrayal and Ishmael's desertion, he couldn't seem to find the strength.

Ishmael's face appeared above him, darkened by the sun behind his head. Some of Ishmael's tears splashed into Fone Bone's eyes; as they fell, they caught the light and looked like dropping crystals set in gold.

"I...Ishmael...help," Bone gasped.

Again Ishmael shook his head. "I am learning what I am, Father," he said. "I know now. I am Locust."

"...No..." Bone choked as his straining fingers shot pain into his wrist. "No. I don't believe that..."

Ishmael leaned down until his leech-like mouth was hovering over Bone's hand. "Everyone hate me," he said. "Even Mama hate me."

"I...don't hate...you," Bone said, feeling his arm lengthen a fraction of an inch as his plastic tissues began to distort under the strain.

Ishmael stood straighter and lost some of the hunch in his back. His voice sounded more as it had in Bone's dream, clearer and more intelligent. "You are wrong, my father," he said. "I am Lord of the Locusts, and I will come into my power. You must do what must be done. In time, you must kill me."

"No!" Bone shouted, though the expense of energy cost him dearly.

Ishmael leaned down again. "Promise?" he asked, and though his voice was very deep, it sounded like a whimper, like Ishmael had returned to himself after the moment of awful lucidity.

"I promise," Fone Bone whispered back. "I swear it. I will never, ever hurt you. I love you, Ishmael. I don't care what they say about you, what you've heard, what you've come to think. You are my son, and I love you, and I don't care what you look like or what you are."

Ishmael blubbered, his tears renewed, and they fell in a small shower on Fone Bone's head and arms. "Oath breaker," Ishmael sobbed, and then he withdrew his face and Bone was staring up at a blue sky and a glaring sun. Fone Bone heard a thud as Ishmael leapt from the building to the city wall and escaped from Atheia.

"Ishmael," Fone Bone choked. "Ishmael...help me."

He hung for a few agonizing minutes until he heard scraping above him and a pair of leather boots appeared at the edge of the roof. Bone looked up to see a man wearing patched clothes and a felt hat that blocked the sun and shaded his face, making his features ambiguous. He was holding a shovel.

"Help," Bone gasped.

Two other men appeared at the figure's elbow.

"Look," the shaded man said, "it's that bone, our prime minister."

"If'n we kill 'im," another said, "it'd be trouble."

"Yeah," said the third. "But if'n we jist let 'im die, what then?"

They watched Bone struggle for a moment. Bone didn't have the breath to argue with them, so he only said, "Help," again and couldn't find anything else to say.

The man with the shaded face shook his head. "We know what you're after, you little runt. We know what you done, and we know you're gonna bring a whole army o' bone creatures in here to rape our women and breed monsters and make us all slaves. If yer gonna die right there, ain't none of us gonna stop it and have the blood o' the whole city on our heads."

Bone shouted in frustration and growing pain, "What are you talking about? That's ridiculous! Where would I get an army of bones?"

"Mebbe prod 'im a bit, Jake," one of the men said.

"Yeah," the shadowed man agreed. "I mebbe prod 'im a bit, I reckon."

He tapped at Bone's fingers with the handle of the shovel. Bone felt his left hand go numb and he gritted his teeth, focusing on maintaining his weary grip.

"Mebbe I prod 'im harder," Jake said, tapping again. Still Fone Bone held on, but barely.

"Mebbe I break his bloody fingers," Jake said. He flipped the shovel over so the business end was down and, with two hands, he lifted it in the air as if to slice Bone's fingers off at the knuckles.

Bone closed his eyes, expecting a shattering blow that would send him smashing into the cobbled alley below, body hopelessly broken--

Jake grunted and strained as he tried to bring the shovel down, but it wouldn't budge. Bone peeked, and the men turned, looking into the large, crimson-rimmed eyes of the Great Red Dragon who with two fingers was pinching Jake's upraised shovel.

"Scram," the Dragon said.

Jake swallowed and let go of the shovel. He took off, slipping and sliding across Atheia's close-knit roofs with his two companions close behind. The Dragon reached down and pulled Fone Bone to safety.

Bone lay on the roof, breathing and absorbing the hot summer sunlight. The Dragon gazed down at him.

"You keep doing that," Bone said.

The Dragon made a slumping motion with his neck and forelimbs, suggesting a shrug. "Caught your breath?" he asked.

"I think so."

"Then talk," the Dragon said. "I know Ishmael invaded your dream. I can detect that much. I want to know what he told you."

Fone Bone stared, unsure of what to say.

"It's best if you tell me," the Dragon said.

Fone Bone sat up. "He...I...it was just a dream, Dragon."

"You should know better than that by now."

Fone Bone rubbed the back of his head. "I don't want to deal with this stuff. I just...I...can't he just be my son? Isn't that enough? Can't I just live a quiet life with my family?"

"Fone Bone," the Dragon said, "if you'd pay attention, you'd realize you don't have a family. You have a queen who's come to dislike you, and you have a peculiar hybrid son."

"That isn't enough?"

"No."

Bone looked out toward the city wall where Ishmael had gone. "He said he was Lord of the Locusts. But that's ridiculous. The Lord of the Locusts is dead."

"There's a little bit of the Locust inside all of us, Fone Bone," the Dragon said. "I would have thought you, of all people, had learned that."

"What are you going to do, then?" Bone asked.

"Me?" the Dragon asked in reply. "I can do nothing. I have done too much already. I am an outcast, and if I interfere now, I will be sure to remain that way." The Dragon sized up Bone's expression. "You didn't know? It's true. My mother Mim has returned to the dragons, but I cannot see her. She is still mad, but there is hope that, in time, with the Locust gone from her, she will heal. I hope, too, that the High Council will in time forgive me for saving you and Thorn." His face darkened. "That is an act of charity I am now deeply regretting."

The Dragon turned to walk away, but he looked one last time at Fone Bone. "You need to decide what you are going to do, Bone," he said, "and this time, make the right choice."

The Dragon leapt from the roof and was gone. Fone Bone sat on the shingles, pulled his knees to his chest, put his head in his hands, and let tears run down his wrists. He was lost. Thorn had turned from him to find solace in Tom's arms, his only son had run away, and he now sat on a roof above a filthy, steaming city, alone, friendless, and hated by the people around him, with a dark destiny he was at last beginning to realize but which he had no power to change.

The Atheians believed in Fate, and Fate, it seemed, could be cruel.

88888

Phoney was exhausted. He wasn't sleeping any better than the other bones, but when he did sleep, the dreams came again, and when he awoke he was as tired as if he'd never slept at all. Every night he saw the same amorphous monster, and its shape was growing more distinct, and every night it said things more terrible than it had the night before. Just last night, the whirlpool that spun where its head should be had grown so big Phoney was sure it would engulf him, and a deep voice had rumbled, "From the matrix of my mother's womb I knew you."

He almost screamed when he awoke, but he stifled it.

They had parked the jeeps at Deren Gard. The bones had laden their pack with whatever equipment they felt they needed. After encountering the sand maggots in the waste, they made sure all the firearms were loaded.

Smiley had grown aloof since Bartleby's death, and Phoney worried he might have one of his angry fits. Smiley glared at Phoney whenever he was nearby, so Phoney made sure to keep away from his cousin as much as possible.

Besides, Phoney had too much to think about. He had expected to have three, four, or maybe no hangers-on by the time they reached the Valley. He had only wanted them to send him off in style, not tag along. But not a single bone had turned around during the trip, and they were all heavily armed, and he'd heard a few talk of open season on humans. As Phoney pulled himself into a sedan chair carried on the shoulders of Ish, Squamous, Funny, and Mastoid, he considered how to calm down his fellow bones.

As per usual, he tried to solve the trouble by talking, and he kept talking as the bones, panting, marched upward through the Dragon's Stair pass. He leaned over the back of the sedan chair and shouted down at all the bones laboring up the slope behind him.

"Yeah, the Valley's a pretty place," Phoney shouted. "And quiet. Peaceful, even. Humans are, uh, kinda nice once ya get ta know 'em."

"Thought dey kidnipped yer cuzin 'r simthin'," Squamous said as he grunted under Phoney's weight.

"Well...sure," Phoney said. "But they did it really nice, ya know?"

They topped the pass and Tibia, who was leading, raised a hand. Only her husband Mastoid knew the signal, and so the sedan tipped precariously when the other bones tripped up.

"Hey, careful!" Phoney shouted. "You're gonna roll me out!"

"You could get down and walk," Mastoid grunted.

"Place is purty," Squamous muttered, looking out over the verdant forest and the misty waterfall. "Real purty."

"Ssh," Mastoid hissed.

"We go stealth from here on," Tibia said.

"What's that supposed ta mean?" Phoney asked.

"It means be quiet," Mastoid grunted. "It also means you walk, Phoney Bone."

Mastoid and Tibia were on point since they were the only bones besides Floyd who knew a lick out about survival in the woods. Phoney walked behind them.

The bones crept into the treeline near the waterfall and their feet crunched on the brown carpet of dried pine needles. Most had their guns out and their teeth clenched. They stepped over roots and glanced about, fearful of monsters similar to, or worse, than the ones they encountered in the desert. Phoney started sweating under the collar of his star shirt. How was he going to explain the armed mob to Fone Bone? And again, why was he even doing this? He had worked for a year to get out of this Valley!

Funny Bone, flies gathering around him, crept up next to Phoney and whispered, "Hey Phoney Bone, dey got thermites here? Hungrisaurs? Bone-suckers?"

"Nyah," Phoney replied, fidgeting with the borrowed handgun in his pocket, "none o' that. Wildlife's real tame, ac'shally. Real tame."

Mastoid put a hand behind him and gave a low hiss. Phoney figured that meant the survivalists wanted them to stop, so Phoney stopped, and the other bones did the same. Over their own breathing, the bones could hear something tromping through the brush in front of them--something huge. The bones hunkered to the ground.

Slowly, carefully, quietly, Mastoid used the barrels of his shotgun to press down the bush in front of him and get a clear view.

An enormous human with a bald head, a large rolling gut, and a nose that looked as if it had been broken a few times was walking through the ferns in front of them. He was holding a crude fishing rod consisting of a wooden stick with a length of string tied to the end. He was muttering to himself and it was evident he hadn't seen the bones.

Phoney crept up behind Mastoid and peered over his shoulder. "It's Euclid," he said.

The man heard him. He stopped walking, stopped muttering, and turned to look. "Phoney Bone?" he said.

There was a whistle by the side of Phoney's face and Euclid hollered at the top of his lungs. It took Phoney a moment to realize an arrow was sticking out of the man's shoulder.

Euclid bellowed like a bull, but the next arrow went through the underside of his jaw and lodged tight in the back of his skull, on the inside. It silenced him. Dribbling blood and looking morbidly comic with the quivering shaft jutting from under his face, Euclid gave Phoney one incredulous look before he toppled over. It sounded like a large bag of something wet hitting concrete.

Phoney stared, mouth open. It happened so fast his brain was still registering it.

Floyd Bone pushed past Phoney and the survivalists, holding his bow. He stepped up to Euclid, looked him over with apparent disinterest, planted a foot on the dead man's chest, and spat.

"That human's a good one," Floyd said.

The next phrase that popped into Phoney's mind was a very human one. He wasn't sure where he had heard it, but it seemed apt.

I am screwed, he thought.

**Next: Bones of Contention**


	8. Bones of Contention

The Chronicles of Fone Bone Oathbreaker

D. G. D. Davidson

BONE is © 2006 by Jeff Smith.

**Chapter 8: Bones of Contention**

_Flowers of all hue, and without Thorn the Rose._

_--_John Milton,_ Paradise Lost _IV.256

Dietrich on a yellow camel wasn't exactly Sir Galahad on a white charger, but he would do.

Covered as they were in bone-sucker blood, Annie and Dietrich were stuck riding together for the next several days--stuck as in literally stuck. Their sweat made the blood sticky, and sometimes Dietrich had to peel Annie off his chest at the end of the night's ride. The smell was bad, and the black flies were worse, but Annie still enjoyed herself. It was almost like her fanciful dreams of quests and romance.

Almost.

The days were hot. While everyone else made himself more or less comfortable, Dietrich and Annie slept in their clothes without their bedrolls. There were enough red sandstone outcroppings to offer shade, and Annie took turns on watch to ensure against more predators of the deep desert. Annie didn't sleep well. During the night, she usually drowsed against Dietrich's stomach as they traveled. Her sleepiness didn't matter much since Dietrich wasn't the talkative sort. He tried to keep the flies off her while she slept, but it didn't do much good.

In the mornings, as the others prepared camp, Dietrich taught Annie how to shoot. He set up small targets in the clefts of rocks, and she fired a bone-made rifle and often hit them.

Rictus looked up from cleaning his pistol. "We'll have to call you Annie Oakley," he said after she made a bull's-eye.

"Hush, Rictus," Annie answered.

They were almost two weeks into their journey when the mountains loomed on the horizon, black with the sun glinting behind them. Visible rays shot through the dusty air and gave the peaks a wild halo.

A cool morning breeze blew across Annie's skin. "Is that it?" she asked as she leaned against Dietrich's chest.

"Could be," he whispered. "I cannot tell from here, but zis could mean vater, at any rate."

Serge, with Rictus at his back, pulled his camel alongside. "Der Berg dort, how far, Dietrich?" Serge asked.

"Not certain," Dietrich replied. "Anozer day, perhap?"

Serge rubbed his head. "I don't sink so. Zey ver hidden behind zees low hills here, and zey are not really so high. I sink ve travel on und reach zem midday."

"Tired of zuh desert?" Dietrich asked.

"Tired of your stink, Dietrich," Serge answered.

The journey to the mountains did take almost another full day, since they had to navigate the dendritic, incised badlands of Deren Gard. The humans were quiet as they rode through the dragons' domain. They knew nothing of the canyon's venerable inhabitants, but the air hung heavy with potent mystery, and riders and mounts alike sensed a need for silence. Occasional trickles of pebbles rolling into the gorge echoed with loud clatters, and the camels' hoofs against the ground beat with a monotonous, muffled thud.

Annie's aural membranes prickled. Like all bones, she could speak to animals and would switch into the ancient Language of the Birds while doing so. It was the tongue of all nature, one only rare, gifted humans could use, and one the bones could never use consciously or intentionally. To Annie, these canyons held a strange buzz pulsing rhythmically through the air, and it seemed that under the buzz an animal was speaking. At first, she thought it was one of the camels, but their mounts had proven to be taciturn and laconic; the sound she heard was like a continuous monologue, or perhaps a conversation involving thousands of voices. She couldn't quite make out the words...

"It feels like zuh Chariot rolled srough here," Dietrich whispered.

"I sense it, too," Annie whispered back. "It's almost like an animal speaking, but I can't quite hear it. I wish the camels would stop walking and everyone would stop breathing."

"Animal?" Dietrich asked. "Ah, ja. I had heard zuh bones could do so. No von in Portsmous has had zuh Gift for five generations."

"Sshh," Annie said. She tried to listen, but as they rose out of the twisting canyonland and approached the base of the high mountains, the sound and prickling sense of expectation ceased.

Dietrich frowned. "No foothills. Zis is no normal range."

Serge and Rictus pulled up alongside. "Vot you sink, Dietrich?" Serge asked. His voice was more jovial than it had been that morning. He had a cigar hanging out of his mouth.

Dietrich nodded to the mountains. "Zees mountains look as if some titanic force push zem up, but zis is no volcanic range. Zis is sandstone and shale."

Serge pointed ahead. "I meant about zat. Zat is pass, ja?"

Christian pulled up beside Serge and rubbed his lean jaw. "Looks almost like a trail, Herr Bürgermeister. Zat pass is used."

"Vhy not?" Serge said. "Zees valley people use it, no doubt."

"One way or the other," Rictus said, his voice wilted, "let's get to a cooler altitude, or let's find some shade or an air-conditioner or something."

Serge guffawed. "Ha! Rictus I've seen trudge days und days in hot sun, und now he complain of von day of daytime desert travel on camelback."

Rictus looked over to Annie and smiled a crumpled smile. "As I've said before, I am too old for this."

Dietrich pointed straight ahead. "You see pass, Serge. I see bone machines."

Annie followed his finger and squinted through her smeared glasses at the metal glaring in the sunlight. Rictus leaned way over to look around Serge and nearly fell of the camel.

"Jeeps," Rictus said.

"Zuh bones' horseless carriages," Serge muttered.

They approached the jeeps with weapons at the ready, but found them abandoned. Rictus tumbled off the camel and inspected each vehicle.

"Nothin' left but the extra gas," Rictus said. "Got 'em parked in the shade, more or less. Gear's gone. Can't tell how long they've been here, but now we know they beat us."

Serge dropped the stump of his cigar. "Zat much I expected, I'm afraid. You sink zey do somesing rash right avay?"

"I dunno," Rictus said, scratching his head. "Phoney's an idiot, though cunning in his own way. He's rash, but I've never known him violent. I can't be too sure who's with him because I...er...had to cut town kinda quick. But that mob he had by the riverbank included the likes o' T. Bone, who's a serious bastard, and Floyd Bone, who's an upstanding pillar of Boneville but a bastard in his own right when you get down to it. If it came to shootin', I think Phoney'd drop his guns and sweat through his star shirt, but T. Bone and Floyd'd shoot back, and what's more, they'd like it. I don't know how warlike these humans are, but Phoney had nothing good to say about those other things, if you believe 'im."

"What sings?" Serge asked.

"Oh, a kinda monster they got here. Somethin' called a rat creature."

Serge raised a graying eyebrow. "Rat...creature? Is zis not redundant?"

"Hey, I didn' name 'em."

The made for the pass.

"The sound is growing again," Annie said.

"Can you hear what it says?" Dietrich asked.

She shook her head. "I'm not sure it's really saying anything. It's fainter here, like a sort of hum. It's the Animal Language, I'm sure of that. You can tell the difference between that and bone speech because it sounds funny...well, that sounds stupid, but I can't explain it. It's like someone walking on your grave. That's what it feels like."

"Does zat feel like anysing?" Dietrich asked. "To haf some von valk on your grave?"

"Oh, I don't know," Annie said in frustration. "Just trust me that the place feels and sounds funny."

"Could you ask zuh camel?" Dietrich suggested.

Annie spoke to their mount and Dietrich listened with interest to the peculiar, polysyllabic lilt of the primordial tongue.

The camel merely turned an eye to her and said, "If you don't knock that off, I'll spit."

She knocked it off.

They traveled for some time until Serge, on point, brought them to another halt. He whistled long and low. "Vell, vell," he said. "That is qvite pretty, eh, Rictus?"

Rictus strained to look around him. "Conifer forest," he noted.

Serge grinned at the men. "Rictus alvays von to take in beauty, ja?"

"Let's just get down there," Rictus said.

As they descended into the Valley, Annie stared at the waterfall, leaned back against Dietrich, and sighed. "Oh, water. You know what that means? That means a bath. Finally. I'm not sure I can stand being covered in bone-sucker blood for one more minute. And those biting black flies were driving me crazy."

They reached the riverbank and the camels drank. The men filled their waterbags.

Rictus looked around and his eyebrows rose. "Hey," he said, "they got dingleberries here!" He ran over to a bush, picked off some of the red berries, and popped them into his mouth. He nodded. "Ripe, too."

Serge grinned. "Like cats to catnip, ja?"

"Wanna join me, Serge?" Rictus asked.

"You know zose sings are poisonous to us, Rictus."

"Your loss."

Annie dismounted and headed upstream toward the waterfall.

"Hey, Annie!" Rictus called. "Where d' you think you're goin'?"

"To bathe!" she yelled back without turning.

"It's not safe!" Rictus shouted.

Annie rolled her eyes and started running.

Serge turned to his second. "Dietrich," he said, "follow, please, und keep eye on Fräulein Bone so see is not eaten by created rats."

"Rat creatures," Rictus corrected.

Dietrich left his camel, shouldered his Bonebreaker, and trudged after Annie.

She was sitting on the bank peeling off her windbreaker when Dietrich arrived. She jumped, aborted her operations, and hugged the jacket around her body. "Mister Dietrich, if you please--"

"Herr Serge said no," Dietrich interrupted, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

"Herr Serge isn't a lady and wouldn't understand a lady's need for privacy," Annie said.

Dietrich shrugged. "I standing vatch. And besides, I need a bas also."

She crossed her arms. "I do not think that would be quite decent, Mister Dietrich."

He pulled the Bonebreaker off his back and leaned on it, gazing down at her with an amused expression. "You baze first, I keep vatch, and zen I baze and you keep vatch. How is zat?"

She stepped away from him. "You'll keep your back turned?"

He laughed. "Ja, if you vant."

"I vant, Dietrich," she said, imitating his accent.

He looked startled and wrinkled his forehead. "Are you angry?"

"Yes!" she said. "I don't want you...standing there! I'm not a little girl and I can take care of myself!"

He knelt by his gun to look at her eye-level. "Annie," he said, "I never said you ver a little girl. Zer are dangerous sings in zuh vorld and ve must be careful. Serge vould not vant any of us going off alone."

"You came here alone."

He held out his hands, palms upward. "But I'm vis you."

That calmed her. She looked down at the ground and her shoulders dropped. "I'm sorry, Dietrich. I'm not mad at you. It's just all these humans around...I feel so small."

He placed a hand on her arm. "You do great sings, Annie. Not every von vould risk herself like zis to find a friend and help him. You are brave." He tapped a hand against his chest. "You have a big heart."

She looked into his dark eyes and said, "Thank you, Dietrich." Taking hold of her soiled windbreaker, she again shrugged it from her pale shoulders. "Turn around, please."

88888

She scrubbed in the frigid water until she had removed most of the gunk, but the smell remained. She beat out her clothes against an underwater rock, wrung them out, and had no choice but to put them on again. With her shoes leaving large puddles, she walked up to Dietrich and said, "I wish I'd brought a towel."

"Use leaves."

"Oh, go bathe, would you?"

He lay the Bonebreaker down, and then he pulled the shotgun and machete off his belt and handed them to her. "Back in a minute."

Holding the jerry-rigged shotgun in one hand and the machete in the other, Annie stared away from the stream. She felt a creeping curiosity, but after the earlier conversation, the temptation seemed ridiculous.

I am not going to peek, she told herself.

While she stared into the undergrowth, Dietrich began singing raucously. Annie rolled her eyes. Men, she thought, and she walked into the forest a ways to escape the noise. She noticed a bit of color in the bushes ahead of her: as she moved closer, she saw it was a yellow feather visible through a gap in the foliage. She thrust the barrel of Dietrich's gun through the leaves to clear her line of sight.

Annie sucked at her teeth and bit her lip. The yellow feather was attached to the shaft of an arrow sticking upward from the shoulder of a large, rotund human.

As quietly as she could, she backed away. Did the rat creatures shoot arrows?

She backed all the way to the stream bank. Dietrich, dry and in fresh clothes, was lacing up his boots.

"I think you better see something," Annie said.

"Vot is it?"

"Something bad."

She took him to the spot. He peered at the body through the bushes, hoisted his Bonebreaker, and stepped into the clearing. Annie, still clutching the scattergun, followed.

Dietrich looked the body over. "Zose are good arrows."

"Oh dear," Annie said, tugging at a lock of her drying hair, "those are bone arrows, I'm pretty sure. I've seen their like in a sporting goods store."

"He is about four or five days dead, I vould say," Dietrich added. He moved his eyes over the ground. "A large party, fifty people or maybe a hundred bones, moved zis vay." He peered into the trees. "And I vould say zey headed sous." He looked down at Annie. "I sink ve had better tell Serge and Rictus."

Serge, Rictus, and the others, as it turned out, had already picked up the trail and were waiting. Dietrich whispered the news of the body to Serge, and Serge nodded.

Annie swallowed and eyed the humans. Human-bone relations were tense at the best of times, and this couldn't possibly improve things.

88888

It got ugly when they came upon the town. The buildings were rustic, solid, more stable than the typical architecture of Portsmouth, and in a different style that emphasized exposed beams and mud-daub. The largest building was a tavern, and the sign out front proclaimed it the "Barrelhaven." There were curious things about the village--the construction looked new, and the ashy soil, dotted with woodchips, suggested the town had been burned and rebuilt within the last year.

But the architecture and the town's history were of little interest to the Portsmouthers. What held their attention were the reek of decay and the moldering bodies lying in the streets.

A light breeze rustled the trees as the humans fumbled with their guns and stared at the carnage. Men, women, and children lay where they had died, arms and legs at odd angles, like rag dolls blown by a violent wind. There was no question what had killed them, for bullet holes were visible in several buildings, and grisly exit wounds gaped large on some of the dead.

Annie glanced at Dietrich. He was looking green. "I...vill be gone a moment," he whispered. He dismounted and lurched behind the tavern.

Annie slid off the camel and ran after him. She found him heaving up his guts into a fern. She stood there and crossed her arms.

He looked up, startled and embarrassed. "Miss Annie..." His voice managed intonations of accusation and apology all at once.

"You said no one was to go off alone," she said.

He nodded and slumped against the back of the building. "Ach du liebe Zeit," he whispered. "I am sorry for my veakness. I..."

She reached out and touched his shoulder. "Dietrich," she said, "don't be. It's okay to react. I mean, you surprise me, true, after those bone-suckers--"

"Zat vas different."

She nodded. "Yes, I guess it was."

"And zen I vas fighting," he added. "Zat is different. Zis is just slaughter."

"It's okay to react," she repeated. "It shows you're human."

He looked at her. "Person, you mean."

"I meant what I said." Annie felt a lump build in her throat and she collapsed to her knees. "Oh dear, Dietrich, what happened here? It...it looks like Darton must have looked."

He shook his head and stared into the forest. "Darton vas vorse. Zuh bones cut off all zuh humans' little fingers, and zer toes and ears, and zuh men zey scalp. Zuh vomen..."

"I don't want to know, Dietrich!" Annie cried. She grabbed her forehead. "Oh, how nice it must be for you! I wish I weren't a bone! I wish the bones would just...would just grow up! We're always bickering, fighting, selfish, and we never learn! Phoney's fleeced Boneville a hundred times and the bones never learn." She pinched her pale skin in disgust. "I wish I were human. Like your Isabella."

She put a hand over her mouth. She had said too much.

Dietrich looked at her again. "Don't," he said. "You are just as zuh Chariot vants you to be."

She sighed and leaned against the wall. "People like you always have such trite answers, don't you?"

He grinned. "Ja, ve memorize zem. 'Von Hundred and Von Clichés for Every Occasion.'"

She laughed.

They sat in silence. The heat worked at drying out Annie's clothes. "Sometimes, though," she whispered.

He nodded. "Ve are no better, I sink. Ve humans remember all zuh mistakes of zuh bones and forget our own. Zuh bones are divided betveen zose who remember zuh mistakes of zuh humans and zose who remember zer own mistakes."

"I remember our mistakes," she said, "and I like yours better."

After a few minutes, Dietrich began to stand. "Let me help you up."

"I can do it myself."

He sat back down. "Zen help me up."

With a small, melancholy grin on her face, she stood and gave him a hand. Though she knew he didn't need her assistance, she knew also that he was trying to make her feel better. His callused palm rasped against her smooth one as she pulled. Still holding hands, they rounded the building.

Dietrich stopped and Annie ran into his leg. Serge, Rictus, and Christian were backed against the tavern's front, facing off against the other men.

Rictus glanced at Annie and Dietrich. "Get over here quick," he said.

With a loud, echoing click, Dietrich chambered the Bonebreaker's first round. He shook the belt of bullets to make sure it was hanging loosely at the rifle's side, and then he let go of Annie's hand and joined his Bürgermeister.

Serge nodded at one of the men in the other group. "Karl," he spat, "seems to sink zis trip is more trouble zan it vors. He vants to kill our friends here and head home. Vhat you sink, Dietrich?"

Dietrich answered quietly, "I said to you I protect Miss Bone vis my life, Herr Bürgermeister, and I keep zat promise." He slid the scattergun out of its holster and handed it to Annie, who numbly reviewed her shooting lessons.

Karl, a short, thick man with sharp canines, a furrowed brow, and a light accent, yelled, "C'mon, Serge! Heimie is dead, and zuh bones have started another damn war! This is none of our business." He pointed a thick finger at Rictus. "It's his fault Heimie's dead and ve're out here! Let's string 'em both up in payment for zis little mess, and let's go home!"

Serge had lost his boisterous manner. "You don't pay for crimes by killing innocents, Herr Karl. You know zat. Vould you slaughter bones as bones have slaughtered us--indiscriminately? Do you really sink you are better zan zem? Zen act like it."

"You always were soft on bones, Serge," Karl said.

Serge shook his submachine gun and snarled in sudden heat, "I killed bones vile you ver pissing your diapers, Herr Karl! I buried tventy good friends in zuh Bonevar. I rotted at Darton fifteen years vile zuh former Bürgermeister--Chariot blast him--told us about 'good of zuh people,' and 'zuh vorld for humans,' and 'an end to zuh bone menace.' I learned to respect my enemy zen, and I learned he could be a friend if ve put zuh past behind us. You have lived soft and learned nossing."

"Ve have more guns!" Karl shouted. He touched his large, square belt buckle and it flipped downward, revealing two very short gun-barrels. The man next to him drew something like a combination pistol and dagger, and beside Serge, Christian raised what looked like a pair of brass knuckles, but he unfolded them to reveal that the knuckles doubled as a handle for the revolver that had been hiding in his palm. The two groups pointed their various weapons at each other and glared in silence for one long minute. Annie listened to everyone's breathing. As the breathing grew faster and faster, she grit her teeth, knowing the breathing would stop for an awful instant and a moment later the shooting would start.

Rictus interrupted. "You know why you have to buy most of your guns off Boneville?" he asked with a grin as he pointed to Christian's clever pistol and fingered the combination gun and hunting knife on Serge's belt. "It's because you waste all your talent turning out sweat like this. Christian, you better be a damn fine aim if you're gonna hit anybody at this range with that thing. And you, Karl," he shook a finger across the street, "that showy belt of yours probably can't even shoot this far, so if you mean to look intimidating by opening it when you have a perfectly ridiculous but perfectly functional .50-caliber machinegun in your hands, I hope you know you look damn foolish. Now why don't you put the toys away and talk like men instead of pointing your pieces at each other like a bunch of squabbling--well, hell, I'll say it--bones."

Annie couldn't help admiring. Rictus could be a real pain, but she now remembered why the bones had voted him mayor so many times. His jovial tone, stinging comments, and slight touch of self-deprecation were exactly what it took to make the men lower their weapons. Most of the tension dissipated.

"Zees bones did not kill zees people or Heimie," Serge said.

"I know," Karl whispered, "but..."

"But you can be better than the bones who did this," Rictus said, still in politician mode. "Things won't get better until we learn to stop pointing guns at each other. It's hard, and it's real uncomfortable when you're the one who puts the gun down first, but somebody has to do it."

Karl unstrapped his Bonebreaker and dropped it. A cloud of dust rose around it as it struck the road. He closed his belt. "I...I am sorry, Herr Bürgermeister. Forgive me, I don't..."

Serge slung his own gun over his shoulder. "It is this grisly scenery," he said, waving it off. "It could make you angry, make you go mad. I vill not punish zis vonce, Herr Karl. Pick up your veapon, you haf dropped it in dirt. Break it down und clean it. Zen ve forget all about zis."

The men murmured and dispersed, moving their various weapons to less threatening positions.

Serge gave Dietrich a meaningful glance and walked away with Rictus and Christian. Dietrich took Annie's hand again.

"Come, Miss Annie. Ve are meant to follow."

They stopped at the edge of town near an abandoned barn that looked older than the other structures, apparently having escaped whatever destruction reduced the town to ash. Serge rounded on Dietrich and Christian. "Karl vas near mutiny and I did not realize. Vhy? Zer are vays to stop zees sings ahead of time."

"Karl is qviet but explosive," Dietrich answered. "Hard to read."

"No von is hard for me to read," Serge replied, rubbing a hand over his dome as if he meant to buff it or maybe wear the skin off.

"You made one little mistake in your career of, what, fifty years?" Rictus asked. "Don't worry about it."

"If not for you, ve might be dead," Serge replied. "Zis is unacceptable." He pointed a thick finger at Dietrich. "And vhere ver you? I do not sink I gave permission to take leave."

Annie jumped in front of him. "He wasn't taking leave, Mister Serge! He was sick!" She clapped a hand over her mouth. "Oh, dear. I'm sorry, Dietrich--"

"It is nossing," Dietrich answered. "I am sorry, mein Bürgermeister. I vas veak."

Serge shook his head and rubbed at it again. "No. I vas. But Karl is right about von sing. Ve must get out of here as soon as possible. Let's find zose bones before zey do more damage. Zuh men are boiling."

"They might boil over onto the bones when we find them," Rictus said, a deep frown on his face. "And the bones, we now know, are out for blood. If they see us, they'll likely shoot first and ask questions later."

"Then what happens?" Annie asked.

"Then there'll be a slaughter of bones like Karl wanted," Rictus said. "One sweep with a Bonebreaker oughta do the trick. Karl was right about another thing--I was an idiot for bringing you out here."

Serge shook his head again. "No more killing. No more killing, dammit. I've spent my political career trying to stop killing."

Something moved in the barn.

"Hold it," Rictus said, drawing his revolver.

Dietrich and Serge brought their guns to business position. Annie held up the shotgun.

Christian, holding his silly pistol, kicked in the door and jumped back.

"Don't shoot!" Smiley Bone shouted, holding a hand over his eyes. "It's just us!"

Smiley's tall, lean form was kneeling in moldy hay, surrounded by a collection of shivering bone children, all of whom were staring at the humans with wide, frightened eyes.

"My Chariot," Dietrich gasped.

"Children?" Annie whispered.

Dolly Bone was hiding her face in Smiley's lap. She looked up, tear-streaked dirt across her nose. She squinted into the light. "Miz Bone?" she asked.

Annie handed the shotgun back to Dietrich and walked into the barn. "Dolly Bone? What are you doing here?" She looked around at the other children, many of whom were her students or former students at West Boneville Elementary.

Smiley babbled. "Portsmouthers? Mayor Rictus? Annie Bone? Oh my gosh! It's terrible! I didn't know what to do, so I grabbed all th' kids I could find and rushed 'em in here. I don' know what's gotten into Phoney. He's ridin' high and they're shootin' ever'body an'...an' it's terrible!"

The children surrounded Annie and she tried to console them, wiping at the dirt on Dolly's nose.

Serge fondled his submachine gun like he wanted to shoot it. "Zis is zuh companion of zat Phoney Bone, his partner in crime. He vas vis Phoney ven zey ver in Portsmous."

"You always find 'em together," Rictus said. He stepped forward. "Alright, Smilesinal J. Bone, talk. What happened and where are your cousins?"

Smiley explained, "When we left the Valley, Fone Bone stayed because..." He glanced at Annie. "Because he wanted to. No one made him, honest, but Phoney said we had to rescue 'im, and when we came we saw Euclid, and Floyd shot 'im! And Floyd shot Bartleby! And then ever'body was shootin' ever'body! It was awful!"

"I told him Floyd shot Mister Bartleby," Dolly cried as she hugged Annie. "But he lied about it, Miz Bone!"

"Zis is confusing," Serge said.

"I knew Floyd was a bastard," Rictus grunted. "Phoney's no murderer, but I don't see 'im riskin' his butt to stop somethin' like that. They're probably draggin' him along and havin' a killin' spree with Phoney on their shoulders as their damn hero."

"At least these kids are safe," Annie said. "I can't believe Phoney brought children. The nerve."

"Vhat now?" Dietrich asked.

"We have to keep going," Rictus answered, "and the kids hafta come with us."

"Rictus--" Annie began.

"No, Annie," Rictus said, "there's no help for it. They're safer now than they were." He looked at Smiley. "Get up, Smiley. The kids'll ride. You get to walk."

88888

When dawn broke, Thorn was standing on the balcony of her room. The sun rose over the shattered eastern mountains, and the orange light made the green of the northern forests, visible on the rim of the world, stand out like a verdant thread. Another beautiful day.

Thorn sighed.

Sooner or later, she had to get moving. It was another day. Another day to be the most unpopular queen in Atheia's history. Another day to receive reports that the ash-damaged lands were still ash-damaged, another day to hear about food shortages all over the Valley, another day to hear about raving, starving mothers mobbing Veni-yan in the streets and demanding bread for their children. Another day to hear rumors that her son was some vaguely menacing monster bent on destroying the universe or eating babies or whatever.

What Thorn really wanted to do was go back to bed.

Better yet, she wanted to go back to the farm. Forget all this. She wanted to kneel down by the well and plant a garden with Fone Bone.

She slammed a fist into the balcony railing.

No, not Fone Bone. She kept forgetting he wasn't her friend anymore. She didn't have friends anymore. Trying to talk to Tom (that oaf, she thought) had been a disaster.

As she stared into the morning light, she saw a flicker of green. It looked like a tiny semicircle, like maybe a speck in her eye.

She slid into a half-trance and examined everything in front of her. As she did, she caught the movement again and was able to track it even though it was faster than her normal vision.

She smiled, but only a little, and held out her hand.

Ted the Bug lighted on Thorn's finger.

"Ted," she said, "where have you been? I've wanted to talk to you so badly--"

"Oh, I's been up north, Thorny," Ted replied in his fast, squeaky voice. "You knows how busy we bugs get and all the stuff we has ta do."

"So you always say."

"Weeellll, don' wanna brag, so's I keeps m' job to m'self. But, I wishes I could jus' chew da fats with ya, but I'm 'fraid I gots real bad news!"

Thorn's expression darkened and she tugged at her lip. "More bad news? I think I've had about all the bad news I can take."

"Sorry 'bout that, Thorny. I almos' hates ta tell ya, but I figger yas better know. See, there's a whole bunch o' people headin' this way. They was all driven outta their homes and are fleein' to Atheia! I figgered as I better set out ahead and lets ya know all 'bout it."

Thorn knelt, still holding Ted on her finger. "What? Why? What's happened?"

"Well, now, Thorny, this is th' real bad part. I sorta don' wanna say...but there's a pack o' bones come outta somewheres an' they's killin' people and raisin' a real ruckus like ya wouldn' believe, and they seems ta be led by that ol' thief, Phoney Bone!"

Thorn rubbed a hand at her mouth. "Oh...oh, what else can go wrong?"

"Things goin' wrong here, Thorny?"

"They certainly are, Ted. Wrong from day one."

Ted twitched his wings, or what Thorn figured were his wings, and said, "Well, I figgers I bes' be headin' off. Lots o' stuff ta do and a bug's day's jist packed..."

"Wait a minute." Thorn cupped a hand around him to block his flight. She stood and put an eye very close to him. "You're leaving me now? You just showed up."

"Well, Thorny..."

"Ted!" Thorn scowled. "You're always leaving when things get tough. Why can't you stick around and help me?"

Ted didn't answer.

Thorn clapped a hand to her forehead. "Nobody helps me. I didn't ask for this. I didn't want to be queen of the Valley. I didn't want to end up with an ugly kid who climbs over buildings. I do not want to deal with a bunch of bones killing people. Why is this happening?"

"You has a kid?" Ted asked.

"Yes, Ted. Where have you been?"

"Congratulations!"

"Uggh."

Thorn dropped her hand and Ted flew to the railing. "Now, Thorn," he said, "I's helped ya out plenty before, an' I likes ya an' all, but ya know I gots no stomach fer violence an' such."

"Not like your brother," she said as a jab.

"My brother's dead."

Thorn's expression grew milder. "Oh...I...sorry."

"Yup. Died in th' ash plume. Real sad. I was up north with th' other bugs fer 'is funeral. Tha's why I didn' stick aroun' ta help ya out."

"I'm sorry, Ted."

"It's okay, Thorny," Ted said, flying to her shoulder. "It's sad an' all, but we was expectin' it. My brother, ya know, he had a rare form o' giganticism 'r somethin' an nobody 'spected 'im ta be aroun' real long."

"Will you stay for just a bit, Ted? Please? I won't make you fight or anything crazy like that."

"Yeah, I's guess I kin stay, Thorny," Ted answered.

He rode on her shoulder as she stepped into the hall and sought out the Veni-yan general. "General, I want your men on alert," she said. "We're expecting invaders."

"Invaders, my queen?" the general asked. "Of what sort?"

She looked up and down the hall and lowered her voice. "Bones. But I expect you to keep that quiet."

"Yes, Your Majesty." He touched two fingers to his hood and turned.

"Wait," she said, and he turned back. "There will be refugees coming ahead of them. I want them let in quickly when they arrive, and I want to be notified. I will meet them at the gate myself to interrogate them, and I want a contingent of Veni-yan ready to escort me, the prime minister, the queen mother, and my advisors when the time comes."

"Of course, Your Majesty." He bowed and left.

"You're doin' real fine, Thorny," Ted said.

"Thanks, Ted. Would you mind waiting here while I talk to Fone Bone?"

"Nope." He flew to the tilted ledge of one of the tower's narrow windows. "I'll be right here when ya wants me."

"Thanks."

She banged on Fone Bone's door.

"Huhh?" a voice asked.

Thorn pushed the door open.

"Get up, Fone Bone."

Bone rubbed his eyes, looked at her, and twisted his mouth. "Oh, it's you. How's Tom?"

"Get up, Fone Bone." She grabbed his arm and yanked him out of bed. "You're through sleeping late."

"You've removed me from my duties, remember?"

"Not this duty." She put her hands on her hips and glared down at him. "Why is your cousin leading an army into our Valley?"

"I...what?"

"You heard me."

Bone blinked, mouth open. "Jeez, are you serious?"

"Yes."

"Thorn, I...are you serious?"

"Fone Bone!"

"Sorry, I just...I have no..."

His dream came back to him and he remembered Ishmael's words. I am bringing you a present from your home country.

"I have no idea," Bone said.

Thorn nodded. "No, I suppose not. There'll be refugees from the north coming soon, and the bones, I suppose, will be behind them. Ted told me."

"Oh, no." Fone Bone rubbed his head. He remembered that villager who tried to kill him on the roof--You'll bring a bone army... "Why is all this happening?"

"I don't know, Fone Bone." She turned away from him, ashamed of the thought she didn't voice: But I'm sure it's your fault.

88888

The refugees, ragged and weary, streamed into Atheia. Most of their clothes were dirty and torn. Despair had etched deep lines into their faces. Twice in one year, calamity had sent them seeking shelter in the great city at the Valley's southern edge. They limped through the open gate, and the Veni-yan guards watched in silence as they trundled by.

Thorn arrived with her court and an ample supply of guards. Some of the people shouted curses as she passed, but none dared anything more violent. With Gran'ma and Fone Bone beside her and her advisors behind, she watched as the haggard people walked in. Ted again rode on her shoulder.

"Wendell!" Thorn shouted.

Wendell looked up and left the line, walking toward her and falling to his knees at her feet. "Your Majesty," he said. The Veni-yan closed in around Wendell and the court. In that tight crowd, the smell of Wendell's stale sweat grew pungent.

Thorn knelt beside him and clasped his arm. "Wendell, is it bones?"

He looked up. She was shocked at his appearance, as she had been when she saw him last fall. During the War of the Locust, he had seemed to age twenty or thirty years in only a few months, and a good deal of white had appeared in his bright red hair. Now he looked even older.

"You know?" Wendell asked. A hint of curiosity or wonder passed over his face, but it faded quickly. "Yes. Yes, of course you know. It is bones. An army of bones, and they have magic metal rods that kill anything they point them at."

"What are these magic rods?" Gran'ma asked.

"They must be guns," Fone Bone explained. "That's what I'd guess. They shoot little pieces of lead really, really fast."

Cedric tugged at his nose ring. "By the stars."

"Wendell," Thorn asked, "why didn't you go to Old Man's Cave?"

"After the Locust, there's not much left of the Cave's defenses, and there are no supplies" he said. "With those weapons of theirs, we couldn't take the chance. We knew Atheia was our only hope."

People were listening. Crowds were pushing up against the Veni-yan, and Thorn could see a few glaring faces through the gaps between the hooded men. "Come with us," she said. She began pulling Wendell up.

"Wait," Wendell said, gesturing toward the refugees. "You should know, those two mangy rat creatures--they insisted on coming with us. We had to offer asylum, what with the new treaty..."

Thorn stood and the Veni-yan parted for her. The crowd gasped as a brown rat creature stuck his head through the gate, gave a sheepish and toothy grin, and wiggled his fingers.

"Hello, small mammals."

"Oh, dear," Thorn said. "Better give them an escort." She nodded to a couple of the Veni-yan, who flanked the rat creatures and led them away.

Thorn pulled Wendell to his feet. "Come to the tower with us, Wendell. I still want to talk to you."

He stood and followed the queen and her court. He made it as far as the tower's entryway, and then he collapsed again with tears running from his eyes. Thorn, Fone Bone, and Gran'ma stood around him. "Oh, I'm sorry, Your Majesty," Wendell moaned. "It's Euclid. The bones killed him."

Thorn squeezed her eyes shut and lowered her head. She put a hand on his shoulder.

88888

Wendell estimated that they had only a few days to prepare. The Veni-yan checked the armory and stockpiled food. Thorn had constant guards on the walls. Rumors, as usual, spread rapidly, and everyone knew an army of bones was coming. In spite of the strain on the military, Thorn doubled her personal guard. Once again, Fone Bone was at her side, but as an advisor, not a friend. Thorn drilled him for information on these so-called guns.

When the bones approached the city, they came not as an unruly mob, but in formation, marching in rows. In the back, four bones carried Phoney on their shoulders in a sedan chair.

Thorn, Fone Bone, Gran'ma, the Headmaster, and Cedric stood on the wall, surrounded by Veni-yan. Ted flitted around mumbling, "Shouldn' be here, shouldn' be here."

The Veni-yan at Thorn's elbow muttered, "What a fool. I could hit that one in the chair from here, Your Majesty."

"Wait," Thorn said, "we'll try to negotiate first." She called out, "Phoney Bone! Are you here to parley?"

Phoney leaned out of the chair and said down to Mastoid, "What's parley?"

"That's where you talk instead of fight, idiot," Mastoid answered, "and I'm pretty sure it's my turn to trade off the chair now."

Phoney sat up again and stared at the figures on the wall. Here to parley? He wasn't here for anything. He didn't know why he was here. He knew he could have resisted, could have never come, could turn around and leave now. But...he was so tired, and it was so much easier just to obey the voice in his head, the voice out of his dreams, the voice that always said, I know you...

"No," he said, too quiet for anyone to hear. "No, not here to parley..."

Jeanne Bone peered up at the wall and spotted Fone Bone. She jumped and waved. "Fone Bone," she shouted, "we know how much it hurts, but you can use me to heal!"

Fone Bone knitted his eyebrows and leaned over the wall. "What the--? Jeanne Bone? What are you doing here?"

"We've come to save you!" she shouted back.

"Oh, for cryin' out--"

"What's going on here?" Thintook strode up with Astynax by his side. "Why was I not told of this approaching army?"

"Not now, Thintook," Thorn said.

"Not now?" Thintook demanded as he elbowed his way past Cedric and the Headmaster and began shoving his way through the Veni-yan. "No, I should think not. A week ago, perhaps, would have been appropriate. Not now. Were I told, I could have sent to Pawa for an army to break the siege. Instead, I find out just now from my lieutenant."

"From your spy, you mean," Gran'ma said, eyeing Astynax, who was pushing through the crowd to keep close to the general. "This doesn't concern you, Thintook."

Thintook was still shoving and now only three Veni-yan stood between him and the queen. One of them pointed a gloved finger and said, "Atheia can fight her own wars without your barbaric troops, treacherous Pawan."

Thintook grabbed the man and threw him onto one of the roofs crowding the wall.

Shouting, the other two Veni-yan beside Thorn rushed Thintook. Thintook hauled the oversized attack-sword off his back and pointed it at them. "Who wants me?" he shouted. "Come for it!"

"Stop this!" Thorn ordered. She grabbed the Veni-yan and yanked them back. Thintook pushed them out of his way and confronted her, fist flexing on the hilt of his sword.

"I'm tired of this, Your Highness," Thintook yelled. "I am tired of the gross mistreatment, the gross mismanagement. I have my own kingdom, my own--"

Tom appeared. The young man, holding a thick hand to his floppy hat, ran onto the wall. He stood in back of Cedric and the Headmaster and shouted, "Your Highness!"

"Get these people out of here!" Gran'ma ordered.

Tom pushed past the befuddled Cedric and the scowling Headmaster, but didn't manage to elbow through the Veni-yan as easily as Thintook had. He yelled over their shoulders as they pushed him back, "I just heard about the siege. I'm here to swear fealty to Atheia and fight for her!"

Astynax tapped Thintook's shoulder. "That's him, milord."

Thintook nodded. "So." He pushed past Astynax, pushed back through the soldiers, and backed Tom up past Cedric and the Headmaster, who had to squeeze around behind Thintook. "Keep away from the queen and go back to your bees, boy," Thintook said.

Tom looked Thintook up and down, and said, "I've killed bigger Pawans than you."

"Only by shooting them in the back like an Atheian churl!"

Thorn shoved past her own guards. "Would everyone...please...get out of my way?" She stepped around Cedric and the Headmaster, stood behind Thintook, grabbed his shoulder, and spun him around. "This is really not the time for this, General Thintook."

Fone Bone elbowed his way around peoples' legs, pushed past Thorn, and stood between her and the bickering men. "Both of you can just shut up!" he said. "And you can both keep away from the queen."

Tom leaned down and hitched a finger over his shoulder. "You can just get lost, Kewpie-doll."

Thorn grit her teeth. "Boys..."

A large shout interrupted the argument. "Your Highness! Headmaster!"

Gran'ma roared in frustration and clapped her hands against a merlon. "Are we preparing to conduct a war here? Why is everyone running onto this wall?"

Adrian ran up behind Thintook with Taneal in his arms.

"Now isn't the time, Adrian," Thorn said.

"But she's getting worse!" Adrian cried. "Your people at the tower said you were here. And Mermie can't help her anymore!" He lowered Taneal to the ground. Bone and Thorn pushed past Tom and Thintook and stood over the hapless girl. They were shocked at how thin she had grown. Her formerly plump cheeks were sunken and greenish. Her breath rattled. She lifted a bony finger and pointed it at Fone Bone.

"Not again," Bone said.

"Oath breaker," she whispered. "The time is now."

Bone felt cold sweat bleed through his skin.

"Now," Taneal repeated.

"Everybody out of here!" Gran'ma shouted. "Fighting men only!"

Down on the ground, Jeanne Bone turned to Twyla. "What in the world is going on up there?" she asked.

Twyla shrugged.

T. Bone, sucking his cigarette, looked over at them. "I dunno," he said, "but I've had enough o' this par-lay sweat." He raised his tec-9s and pointed them at the top of the wall. "I let these smoochas do my talkin'." He cut loose.

Fone Bone heard the shots. "Duck!" he yelled. Bullets struck several of the Veni-yan and red erupted from their torsos as they stumbled backwards and fell from the wall. Everyone else hit the deck. Rock chips flew from the parapet as bullets struck it.

"They do have magic sticks!" Cedric shouted.

"Bloody stars," the Headmaster mumbled, rubbing at his hip where it had struck the walkway.

Adrian was on top of Taneal, protecting her. He looked up, anguished tears running down his face. "She's stopped breathing!"

One of the Veni-yan raised his hooded head and pointed a finger at Fone Bone. "This is his fault! If the bones want him, throw him over the wall and give him to them!"

"Good idea," Tom said. He made a grab for Bone, but a new hail of bullets sent him ducking again.

Fone Bone was lying next to Thorn. She turned her head and looked at him. Her face was exhausted but blank, almost like a mask.

"Fone Bone," he thought she said, but she didn't speak. The words were in his head.

"Thorn," he answered. He didn't say anything else, but his heart hurt. He still loved her, no matter what he told himself, and he knew that, somewhere inside, in some way, she loved him too.

Her hand touched his. Still it surprised him--the calluses, the roughness, the fine grooves in the tips, the warmth.

Taneal's breath rattled again, and she said, "Destiny. Fate. Do it now."

"Oh, Fone," Thorn whispered, so quiet Bone could barely hear her above the roar of the guns.

"Thorn," he whispered back.

She put her arm around him and held his head against her neck. "I don't know what's happening, Fone, and I'm scared."

"I'm here," Bone said.

"Do it!" Taneal hissed.

Thorn kissed the top of Bone's head. "I'm really sorry, Fone Bone." Her arm slipped off his back. "I have to go now."

Thorn stood and picked up the Harvestar shield. Though bullets whistled around her, she didn't flinch as she strapped the shield to her arm. She gazed from the wall at the bones. Her face was no longer tired, but it was still a mask, of serenity now instead of despair.

"Destiny," Taneal whispered again. "Fate."

Thorn's hand turned white from the tightness of her clench on the hilt of the Harvestar sword. Fone Bone watched as her face grew terrible: he saw there that same expression, the one she had when the Locust moved between them, the one she had when she broke Erasmus's neck. She was going into the Dreaming, that terrible Dreaming that gave the power of war and demanded blood in return.

"Thorn..." said Fone Bone.

With a loud rasp, Thorn yanked the ancestral sword of the Harvestars from its scabbard. The blade flashed in the sunlight.

Fone Bone felt tears running down his face. "Thorn, please don't."

Before anyone could grab her, Thorn leapt from the parapet.

T. Bone saw her coming and the cigarette dangled loose from his lips. "Smooch," he said, and he raised his tec-9s again.

He got off the first shot, and then the bones opened fire all at once. Bullets blasted chunks out of the masonry. Two more Veni-yan fell. One crumpled to the stones in a pool of blood. The other stumbled backwards and crashed onto a roof.

Cedric tried to pull Fone Bone back, but he stuck his head over the wall and stared as Thorn braved the fire with the shield and sword of her birthright in hand.

The bullets smote the city's stonework, and they smote the earth, but the bones fired their guns in vain, for the Veni-yan-cari had come upon them in her wrath. Sinking deep into the Dreaming, Thorn could see the bullets in flight. Fone Bone had described them correctly; they were fast-moving pieces of lead. She called up her powers to increase her speed, but even then, she couldn't quite move faster than the bullets, at least not without seriously compromising her body's tissues. She focused her will on the Dreaming surrounding her and set it to deflect the projectiles. Now the bullets were easy to dodge.

T. Bone emptied two clips and was sure he would make a kill, but his bullets found nothing but sand. He dropped the clips to the ground and loaded two more, but his enemy was now a blur with a length of glowing metal in her hand. With each swipe of her blade, bone heads, arms, torsos flew up, trailing thick streams of blood that misted in the air or rained in large droplets and coagulated in the dust.

"Damn," T. Bone muttered. He hooked the guns to his vest, lit another cigarette, and edged toward the back of the crowd. T. Bone knew when the gettin' was good. In the confusion, under the deafening thunder of bone weapons, nobody noticed as he slipped out of sight.

Fone Bone stared open-mouthed. He felt horror at the callous bloodshed, yet as he watched Thorn move, his revulsion became fascination and then heat. He felt his blood quicken and throb in his head. His fingers clutched the parapet in a spasm. He watched his countrymen--and women--torn apart by Thorn's cruel blade, but this ruinous field of gore was a small price to pay to see Thorn in unveiled glory. This was indeed the woman he loved, now transfigured into raw force; every aspect of her that pulled at his soul was naked before him. With joy, he would have permitted the murder of all Boneville with its men, women, and children, to see her in this light.

And, too, he realized with terror, his pulse quickened at the sight of blood. As Ishmael had said, the universe demanded this fluid, the lubricant that turned its ethereal gears. Bone felt a sharp desire, not quite lust and not quite gluttony, but deeper still and more animal, rousing in his heart like a leviathan churning the sea. He understood the urges that drove the rat creatures in the former days to pound their drums and raise their hands to the stars as life's ether poured out upon the stones, for the life of the flesh is in the blood. He had a dark glimpse into their dark world, and he wanted--needed--in that moment to slit the throats of animals, or enemies, or to cut, tattoo, or pierce his own body and pour forth dark wine into the fire in propitiation of the gods.

Thorn moved among the bones with the grace of a leopard but the force of an elephant. They pointed their weapons and fired, but to no avail. They fell to the ground with cut faces, missing limbs, or flown life. They tumbled headlong into the dust as their innards splashed forth into the earth, and the earth drank greedily, as it always will the spilled sacrifices of war. Jeanne and Twyla were in Thorn's way, and then they were not. Mastoid went down as he ran from Phoney's chair and tried to assist his people. Tibia escaped, but barely. Funny and Floyd kept out of Thorn's path, but Ish died, and so did Squamous.

The Dreaming, tipped askew by broken oaths and wonton deeds, trembled on its fulcrum. It was slick now with blood; the slightest touch could throw the universe back into order or reeling into chaos.

Thorn was heading for Phoney, and Phoney knew it. The bones holding his chair had dropped it, and he sat there, immobile. Horrified, nauseous, paralyzed with fear, Phoney wanted to flee, but he only shouted, "Thorn! Keep away from me!"

"Phoney Bone!" Thorn yelled. She knocked ten bones twenty feet in the air with a hard swipe of her shield, and then her way was open. The sword dropped from her fingers as she clutched for Phoney. He scrambled backwards.

"Phoney!"

"Keep away! Away!"

Phoney's hand thrust into his pocket and felt something heavy and solid--T. Bone's .20-caliber handgun. He grabbed it, slipped a finger into the guard, and squeezed. He heard a loud crack as several square inches of his shirt dissolved.

Thorn reeled.

The hollowpoint bullet flattened as it entered Thorn's chest. It crushed her spleen, tore apart the bottom of her heart's left ventricle as well as the descending aorta, and forced the blood backwards in the artery, causing immediate cardiac arrest. Traveling at an angle, the expanding bullet collapsed her right lung and lodged beside a rib.

Phoney stared. A small wisp of smoke floated from his ruined shirt.

Fone Bone's expression distorted into a crumpled mask of anguish.

The shock to her nervous system plunged Thorn into the void at her center. Floating in the cool, away from the pain, she noticed again the light of her soul below her. Before, she had resisted the temptation to gaze into her innermost parts, but she no longer wanted to resist. She turned her face full into the light: she knew she must now confront those things she would not or could not confront in life. Now was the time. She would not return from this meditation.

The light was beautiful, just as she knew it would be. As she gazed, it spoke, not with words, but with something deeper. It said only, "Hello." Smiling in joy, though feeling fearful as well because she knew a judgment was coming, she sank toward it until it filled everything.

Thorn's body fell to the ground, and the fulcrum of the universe tipped toward center, but it was not centered yet.

Fone Bone screamed. He made to leap over the parapet, but Cedric and the Headmaster pulled him back.

Bone didn't even know he was screaming. "I'll kill you, Phoney! I'll kill you! I swear I'll kill you!"

They dragged him to the walkway and he howled. Gran'ma slapped him.

Taneal had a seizure. Pressing her head against the ground and arching her back, she laughed and cried out in a deep voice, "The last oath spoken, the first one broken. It is now avenged! The one who bears the star has borne the star away!" She twisted around and pointed a finger at Fone Bone. "You're next, oath breaker!"

"Shut up!" Bone yelled at her. Then he clutched his own head as if to break it open. "No! No! No! I should have known! I should have...I..." He pounded a fist against the walkway. "I...she...I..." He blubbered. "She...promised me not to seek the Crown of Horns! That was the second oath of the prophecy...and I didn't see...I thought I...I didn't...Thorn! Thorn!"

He grabbed his face again. Had he had nails, he would have left deep gouges.

88888

Fone Bone lay in the tower garden. They had sent him off the wall with an escort, but he didn't feel he could raise the effort to climb to his room. He lay facedown in the grass for several hours.

A shadow loomed over him. He looked up and saw the two stupid rat creatures. He hoped they weren't planning to chase him, because he didn't have the energy to run.

He had never learned the rats' names, if they had names, and though one was brown and the other was a sort of purple, he had trouble telling them apart. One, he knew, liked quiche, and the other one liked quiche but pretended he didn't, and one of them, apparently the one who like quiche, was supposed to be overweight, though he looked the same size as his "comrade." Bone didn't know one from the other, and at the moment, he didn't care.

"Hello, small mammal," the purplish one said.

"What do you want?" Fone Bone muttered.

The brown one cleared his throat. "Uh, well, small mammal, we wanted to...er..."

"Spit it out!" the purple one said.

The brown one cleared his throat again. "Well, we wanted to say we sympathize with you in this time of loss."

"Yes," the purple one said. "I used to have a cave-mate myself. One day she died when she ate some bad pork. I grieved for many months until I met my comrade here. Sometimes," he clutched his stomach, "it still hurts inside."

Fone Bone squeezed his eyes shut. He really, really didn't want to hear about this.

"Anyhow, small mammal," the brown one continued, "once, when we were hungry and depressed during the deep winter, you came out and fed us yummy, succulent quiche even though we had tried to eat you on several occasions, and so, though we know it can't replace your missing loved one"--the brown rat creature held out a steaming dish--"we thought we should do the same in return."

"'Turnabout is fair play,'" the purple rat quoted. Then he put a claw to his mouth and looked thoughtful. "Or is it, 'No good deed goes unpunished'?"

"Would you hush?" the brown rat said. "Anyway, small mammal, we made you a quiche out of some small dead thing. We packed it for the journey here but didn't eat it all, and it was several days dead, so it should be extra delicious." He laid the dish down next to Fone Bone.

Bone didn't answer. The rats sat on their haunches and twiddled their claws for a few minutes.

"Well...bye," the purple one said, and the rats took off as fast as they could.

Fone Bone released a long, low sigh. "Stupid...stupid...rat creatures," he mumbled. He couldn't put any heart into it. Somehow, a dish of carrion quiche made everything worse. He started crying.

He looked up through his tears and saw Ishmael standing before him.

"Ishmael," Bone whispered.

"Do not touch me," Ishmael said. "I cannot yet produce corporeal illusions like my predecessor, but I will learn."

"I'm dreaming?" Bone asked.

"A waking dream, my father." Ishmael's voice held real concern, as if he, in some way, grieved for his mother. "Do you like your present?"

Fone Bone, on his stomach, reached out a hand like a dehydrated man stretching for an illusory pond in the desert. "Ishmael...son...please..."

"I would hold you and comfort you if I could, Father, but I don't know how long I can maintain this image," Ishmael said as he leaned down. "So I want you to listen closely..."

**Next: A Prayer for the Damned**


	9. A Prayer for the Damned

The Chronicles of Fone Bone Oathbreaker

D. G. D. Davidson

BONE is © 2006 by Jeff Smith.

**Chapter 9: A Prayer for the Damned**

_O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!_

--2 Samuel 19.33b

Night.

The stars were clear in the Valley, and Funny Bone couldn't take his eyes from them. He wasn't used to seeing stars. Thin smog always hung over Boneville, and the bright lights of the city masked the skies. At night, the Boneville sky was a plate of smoked steel, its only light a reflection of the lights below--neon lights advertising dance clubs and casinos or red lights flooding the Kiss 'n' Tell District where heavily made-up bone girls promised quick smooches in dank back alleys. At night, the beer and dingleberry wine flowed freely. At night, bone men in pinstriped, double-breasted suits without pants walked briskly, swinging watches on gold chains and averting their eyes from the homeless who slept for warmth on steaming sewer grates. At night, bone women in high skirts, mouths rimmed with thick lipstick, clutched fashionable designer purses and chattered and winked as their heels clicked against the walks. At night, the churches, synagogues, and mosques stood empty and dark, the sky was blank and uninteresting, and no one had to think about the big things.

Funny Bone stared, his rifle hanging in his limp hand, and he wiped a grimy sleeve against his forehead. Several of the bones who had traveled to this Valley were dead now. About twelve, all told, thanks to that angry blur that had leapt from the wall. The bones were anxious and afraid, so Funny Bone was on night watch to make sure there was no further funny business.

He spun when he heard the crunch of feet in the dust behind him. He let his breath out slow when he saw it was only Floyd.

"Don' sneak up on me like that, Floyd," Funny wheezed through his adenoids.

"You s'posed to be guardin' the camp," Floyd said. "Look to me more like you starin' inta space."

"Sorry," Funny said. "I jist don' see stars much, y' know? Don' get out."

"Tha's too bad, Funny Bone," Floyd said. "Ya gotta get out."

"Yeah. Yeah, I know." Funny Bone's hands trembled as he pulled his old rifle to his chest.

"You shakin', Funny."

"Yeah, sure, Floyd. Cold, y' know?"

"Yeah, it sure chilly. But it ain't dat chilly."

Funny backed up a step and looked at him askance. "How you know? You can't know how cold another man is."

"Truth."

"Sure." Funny turned his head away, trying to look relaxed.

"You wearin' a sweater," Floyd said.

Funny fumbled and almost dropped the rifle. He took another step back. "Well, I always wear a sweater, Floyd Bone. Get cold easy."

"Sure," Floyd answered, stepping forward. "Chubby boy like you get cold 'lot faster 'n a thin boy like me, I bet."

"Yeah. Well, no. Well, whatever. Whaddayew want, Floyd Bone?" Sweat trickled from Funny Bone's bald head.

Floyd squeaked a finger against one incisor and then said, "You sure it ain't cuz you nervous...'r maybe cuz you need a hit?"

"What?"

"C'mon, Funny."

Funny shouldered the rifle and moved from one foot to another. "Yeah, yeah. I ain't had smack for a few days. Mebbe I quittin', y' know?"

"Maybe y' full o' sweat." One by one, Floyd cracked each knuckle on his right hand. "Never touch th' stuff m'self. But I hear what it does when ya come down. Stuff's like endorphins. Big rush. Come off it 'n no more endorphins. Makes ya depressed, sensitive ta pain, too. You sensitive to pain, Funny?"

"I dunno." Funny edged away from Floyd.

Floyd stepped forward again. "Me, I don' touch the stuff, like I said. I get high on life. Y' heard that phrase, Funny Bone? High on life?"

"Whaddayew want, Floyd?"

Floyd cracked the knuckles on his left hand. "Endorphins. Adrenaline. All that sweat. Don' need me no fix like th' smack you rub on your nose. Discipline, Funny. Ya ever hear o' people who can give 'emselves adrenaline, jus' like that, when'er they wan' it?"

"Yeah..."

"I kin do that." Floyd scrunched up one shiny eye, shook a moment, and grinned. "Don' do it much, though, cuz I got discipline. High on life."

"Yeah, you keep sayin'."

"Only when I need it, ya see. Like when I need ta get pumped." Floyd tilted his head to one side and cracked his neck. "Like when I need ta beat th' livin' hell outta somebody." Floyd Bone stepped forward again and pulled an arrow off his back.

Funny cringed. "Ah, Floyd..."

"Discipline, Funny Bone." Floyd gouged the arrow into the back of his own wrist and pulled it a few inches. Blood seeped and then streamed down his arm. Floyd didn't even wince. "Think you could do that?"

Funny, shivering badly now, shook his head in three quick jerks.

"Tha's discipline." Floyd stuck the arrow back in the quiver and took another step forward. His eyes glinted and stars shone through his hair, seemingly caught in his waving locks. His was a gorgon's head, hovering over Funny Bone and writhing with snakes. His left wrist drizzled blood onto a clenched fist. "I hear you been talkin' 'bout me," Floyd said.

"Now, Floyd..."

"Hear ya been spreadin' rumors. Sayin' I tricked Dolly Bone inta comin' so's I could shoot the rat. That about right?"

"Floyd, I..."

"Funny Bone?" Floyd asked.

Funny stopped shaking and his eyes slid to Floyd's feet. "Yes."

Floyd nodded. "Now, Funny Bone, tha's real unkindly. Ain't it? Ain't it now?"

Funny nodded.

"Now Funny, I know you know this. What's the first rule o' survivin' in Boneville? C'mon now, you tell me."

"Don' mess with Floyd Bone," Funny whispered, not looking up.

"Can't hear ya, son."

"Don't mess with Floyd Bone," Funny said a little louder.

"Tha's right. Cuz Floyd Bone, he find out, don' he? Don' he?"

Funny nodded.

"Tha's right. Ya let ol' T. Bone puttcha up fer yer drugs, cuz he wants ta ruin my reputation. Ain't that right?"

Funny nodded again.

Floyd pressed his hands together as if he were praying and cracked all his knuckles at once. "Pay now or later, Funny Bone?"

Sweat broke from Funny Bone's skin in waves, but his shivering stopped. This wasn't much, really. He'd been beaten before. Many times before. His father, the bullies at school, thugs on the street, his pushers, a few employers. Beat Funny Bone, Boneville's official pastime. After all that, a beating from a real honest-to-goodness Floyd ought to be an honor.

"Pay now, Floyd Bone."

Floyd clenched the knuckles he'd been cracking and moved in. Funny didn't cry, yelp, or even whimper. He didn't exactly take it like a man, but he took it like one who had taken it before and knew the ropes.

Both of Floyd Bone's fists were bloody now, but Floyd wasn't going to stop, not until he was good and satisfied.

88888

Fone Bone lowered a rope and climbed down the wall. Creeping quietly through the burned outer town was a bit of work, but he managed. He thought sneaking into the bone camp would be harder, but that was easy, too. It seemed the bones didn't have a guard out. Fone Bone heard sounds from the other side of camp, like thumping and maybe a few dampened groans, but he wasn't in a curious mood and he didn't investigate.

Finding Phoney's tent was simple. It was the big one, the one in the middle. Fone Bone slipped in and crouched near the flap, letting his eyes adjust. In the dim glow of moonlight peering through the nylon, he spied Phoney sleeping on a bedroll. A dark object lay near his head.

Still crouching, Fone Bone crept closer. He reached out a hand for the dark spot on the floor and his fingers closed around the hilt of a knife, smooth from age and somehow warm in the chill air. He recognized that feel. It was the family heirloom, Piecemaker, old Big Johnson's knife.

Big Johnson Bone. Somehow, thinking of Boneville's founding father made Fone Bone hesitate, though he didn't know why. He didn't know what Big Johnson would approve or disapprove. Fone Bone didn't know a thing about him.

The knife slid out of its sheath, and there was the blade, still sharp and shiny after all this time. All of Big Johnson's descendants had kept it safe, sharp, and packed in oil. This might be the first time it tasted blood in twelve generations.

Blood. There was that word again. Fone Bone was beginning to hate it.

He pressed the long blade against Phoney's neck and hissed low:

"Wake up, Phoney."

Phoney snorted.

"Wake up, Phoney Bone."

"Umnugham," Phoney said, smacking his lips as he slept.

"I want you to wake up and look me in the eye before I cut your throat."

Phoney swam through that void again, and a harsh, insistent voice floated after him. It was talking over that other voice, the one that always visited Phoney in his dreams. Phoney thought he recognized the new voice. He tried to follow it, and soon he found the void dissipating and the close walls of the tent growing in solidity. The darkness came into focus and a face loomed above him. Even in the dark, he could make out some of its features, or rather its distinctive lack of features.

"F-Fone Bone?" Phoney asked.

Fone Bone grabbed the neck of Phoney's star nightshirt and pulled him upright. He kept the knife against his throat.

"You..." Fone Bone hissed. "How...how could you?"

Phoney swallowed and his unibrow lowered. "Don't point that at me. I'm your cous--"

"Don't even!" Fone Bone hissed back. "You killed her! You're no cousin of mine!"

"It was an accident!"

"Accident?" Bone demanded, then checked his voice, afraid he was too loud. He hissed again, "You call it an accident that you tromped into the Valley and shot the place up? What were you thinking?"

Phoney opened his mouth. No words came, and that was unusual for him. He didn't know what he was thinking. It seemed so much easier to do it than not to do it. It seemed...

Holy cow. Was he Phoncible P. Bone? Since when did Phoney Bone take the easy path? He would have slapped himself if that wouldn't have jarred his neck against the knife. The sudden threat on his life brought him out of the stupor into which sleeplessness had pulled him since the night that horrible, amorphous creature first appeared in his dreams.

"Fone Bone..." And he stopped. He wanted to tell about the voice, but he couldn't. Phoney Bone didn't take the easy path, but he didn't confess or confide, either. "I don't know what came over me," he said, and he opened his hands and scrunched up his face, mimicking remorse as well as he knew how. That should be enough for Fone Bone.

Fone Bone dropped him, stood, and looked down in disgust. "You think that makes it better, don't you?"

"Fone Bone--"

"Well, it's the closest I've heard you get to sayin' sorry. That's pretty amazing from you."

"What do you want me to--?"

Fone Bone grabbed at Phoney's neck and shoved his nose in Phoney's face. "I want you to bring her back, Phoney. Don't you get it? You killed Thorn!"

"And you vowed to kill me."

Fone Bone's grip loosened. "I did?"

"Yeah. Up on the wall. Don't you remember?"

Fone Bone tried to think back. He didn't remember. "I did?"

"Yeah." Phoney sounded calm. Maybe he wanted this after all he'd done. There had to be something for which even Phoney Bone couldn't forgive himself.

Fone Bone looked at the knife. He felt like this was his life, this knife. Two edges, one pointed at Phoney and the other at himself. Right now, this very moment, he could change his destiny. He had made another oath, and he had the chance to fulfill it.

That's three for me, he thought. The prophecy only mentioned two, and one of them was Thorn's. Either Taneal couldn't count or something else was going on.

Fone Bone dropped Phoney and moved away. Another broken oath.

Bad things came in threes, wasn't that right? It was the first broken oath that mattered because it led to the others. But Thorn had first broken an oath...but then again, Fone Bone had asked her to, had demanded it. Unreasonable demands. He asked her not to save the world. She asked him to stay with people who were not his people. He could have said no. He could have gone home. Everything could be all right now. Maybe Thorn wouldn't have paid the price if Bone had left the Valley.

It really was his fault.

The knife slipped to the ground. Bad things came in threes.

Phoney crawled to the edge of his sleeping bag. "Fone Bone," he whispered, "I am sorry! I am! I didn't mean it, but...she's just a human. A human. Like a Portsmouther. Can't you understand that? Can't you see that? What's wrong with you? You and your human books and your human fantasies! If you just woulda gotten yer head outta the clouds, ya coulda been happy, ya know that? Ya coulda married...I dunno, Annie Bone 'r somebody. Come home, Fone Bone. Now you don't have any attachments here, right? Now you can come home with me and we'll forget all this and everything'll be alright, right?"

Fone Bone, face displaying both disgust and despair, shook his head. "You don't get it, Phoney--"

"She was just a human, Fone Bone!" Phoney shouted.

"She was the mother of my child!" Fone Bone shouted back.

Phoney's expression collapsed like melting wax. He held out his fingers and groped about as if he didn't know where he was. "Oh, no...no. No, no, no! Fone Bone! No! What have you done? What have I done? No, no! No!" He clutched his head and mashed his face against the ground.

Fone Bone picked up the knife and shoved it into the floor of the tent near Phoney's head. "Live with yourself, Phoney Bone," Fone Bone said, "and I'll do the same."

He crept out of the bone camp the same way he got in. He climbed over the parapet, untied his rope, turned, and jumped when he saw Gran'ma and several Veni-yan.

"Gran'ma?"

Gran'ma stood with her arms crossed, glaring down at him. One of the Veni-yan grabbed Fone Bone by the neck and picked him up.

"While you were out," Gran'ma said, "there was a little coup d'état, as we quaintly call it. I'm afraid you're the coup-ee, Fone Bone, dear, and I'm the coup-er."

"Ugurrugh," Fone Bone choked back.

"Let him speak," Gran'ma said.

The soldier's grip loosened. "Gran'ma," Fone Bone gasped, "I'm prime minister. The queen--"

"Figure it out, Bone!" Gran'ma snapped. "You're deposed. By me. Do you understand what's happened here? The Harvestar line--my granddaughter!--is dead, thanks to you. I'm angry enough to have you killed, but I actually intend to throw you in the dungeon until this little war is over, and then I'm going to send you without supplies over the Dragon's Stair and let you fend for yourself. Don't make it worse." She looked at the Veni-yan. "Throw our prime minister in the dungeon, please."

"But, Gran'ma, I didn't do anything--"

"No, dear, you didn't. That's the problem."

A gloved hand pressed over Bone's mouth.

88888

The more things change, Fone Bone thought, the more things stay the same.

It was much like it had been before. He was down in a dungeon cell with wan light tilting in through a high, barred window. Manacles were on his ankles, and Adrian was peering in at him through the bars.

But this time, Thorn wasn't here. Fone Bone's heart was bruised deep inside. Seat of emotions. Symbolic of course, but it really did hurt in the chest. Bone wondered if humans felt their pangs of disappointment and loss in some other place, or if their hearts also hurt. Maybe their pain was worse; after all, they had a lot more organs, so maybe they could hurt in more places. With that in mind, Bone could forgive Gran'ma. He had looked in her face as the soldiers hauled him away, and he had seen an expression he'd never seen before. A real anguish, a real despair. Gran'ma had sheltered Thorn and then pushed her, and Thorn had broken just as Bone feared she would. Bone could read Gran'ma's heart--or whatever--in her face: it said, I'm a bad grandmother. That was an emotion Bone could understand. Self-pity. Not the most virtuous of sorrows by any means, but easy to understand.

And now he was back in the dungeon, and Adrian was peering through the bars.

"Fone Bone?" Adrian said.

Bone looked up. "I'm sorry, Adrian. I've made some pretty big mistakes."

"I'm not mad at you, Fone Bone."

"Thanks."

Adrian clutched the bars as if he were the one in a cell. "Is there any way, do you think, to help my sister?"

Bone forced a smile. "I...really don't know, Adrian."

His mind fell on what Ishmael, or an image of Ishmael, had told him as he lay in the garden after Thorn's death. "My message is this, Father. I will wait for you at Sinner's Rock. Come to me there. That is all." He also remembered Taneal's chilling words, screamed in a voice that wasn't hers, "You're next, oath breaker!"

The memory struck him as if she were right there in his cell, and her words echoed off the dank walls, or perhaps they echoed in his head. He knew what she meant, and he knew what Ishmael wanted, and he knew he couldn't escape.

I'm so tired. That thought engulfed him like a cold pool. As he washed in it, his muscles relaxed and a knot of tension behind his forehead loosened. He was numb. Maybe he didn't want to escape. Thorn dead, his son lost. Maybe Fone Bone wanted to meet his destiny. Perhaps, like Œdipus, he could be at peace in the Garden of the Furies.

Fone Bone leaned his head against the wall and said, "I may be able to help her, Adrian. I may be able to make this all stop. There's something I have to do, though. Do you think you could get me out of here?"

Adrian looked right and left. No guards. They were all at the wall. "I'll get the hammer," he said.

88888

Adrian was still the little smuggler he had been when Bone first met him. This time he shoved Bone in a large knapsack and flung it over his shoulder. He knew every back alley in the city, and as Bone rode in the cramped, moldy pack and breathed in the breath he'd already breathed out, it seemed Adrian was using them all. After an hour or more, Adrian let him out of the pack near a small gate in a corner of the city wall.

Bone breathed deep. The air of Atheia was never pleasant, but it was fresh after the inside of that pack. "No guards," he said.

"They're stretched thin," Adrian answered, "and they won't see any reason to guard this gate. It's for pilgrims; we're near the temple district. But it leads out into the burned town near the city's northwest corner. From there, can you get to wherever you're going?"

Bone nodded.

Adrian hugged him, and Bone hugged him back, appreciative of the warmth and friendship.

"I don't know what's going on," Adrian said, "but I trust you, and I know if anyone can help Taneal, you can. Come back and tell me when you've done what you're going to do."

"I will," Fone Bone lied. He paused, and his mouth twisted into a small smile as he added, "I promise."

Adrian pulled back the bar from the gate. "Go, and may the stars guide you."

88888

The sun rose over the city, and the towers and pagodas cast long shadows over the squalid huts and clustered warehouses. When the sun rose, battle came fresh. Gran'ma stood near the main gate. She looked up to the top of the wall where several Veni-yan crouched. Anyone who raised his head above the parapet got shot, and so the soldiers kept low. They didn't even dare put men in the watchtowers because even there some of the bones could reach them with their magic rods.

Thintook and Tom both knelt in Atheia's oily dust at Gran'ma's feet. "Your Highness," Thintook said, "I swear fealty to you."

"And so do I," said Tom.

"I am grateful for your loyalty to the Holy City and my ancient house," Gran'ma answered. "We will need brave men, men willing to die, but we will win." Gran'ma turned away from the men and looked down at Ted, who was perched on her finger. "Ted, I need to ask you a favor."

"Uh, Gran'ma..."

"Ted," she warned, "please don't argue, dear. Not now."

88888

The Portsmouthers and their bone companions moved southward along the base of the western mountains where there was less blowdown and ash. With the city in view, they hid behind a line of boulders in the plain below Sinner's Rock. A brass spyglass in hand, Serge surveyed the plain and muttered to himself.

"C'mon, c'mon," Rictus said, shuffling his feet. "Either speak up or stop hoggin' the glass."

"Zuh bones are zer," Serge said. "Zey camp near zuh vall. Too close, really, if zose humans have arrows. Your Phoney is no varrior, I sink. Und zer is an outer town outside zuh vall, but it seems to be in ruins."

Annie was crouched behind him. "Did the bones do that?" she asked.

"I do not sink so. Zer is nossing burning now. I see no sentinels on zuh vall. Probably zuh bones haf been shooting zem, ja? My guess is, zuh city is assessing zer losses and planning a counter-attack."

Rictus slammed a fist into a palm. "That means we've got precious little time to neutralize the bones and get 'em out o' here."

Christian scratched the stubble on his lean jaw and, hunching low, moved to the boulder next to Serge. "Herr Bürgermeister, zuh potential for casualties might grow higher if ve interfere. Zuh bones vould likely shoot us, and even if ve can get zem out, zuh troops in zuh city may pursue if zey detect a retreat."

"I am avare of zat," Serge said. His voice indicated that he didn't much like to hear it.

Christian glanced at Dietrich, who sat next to Annie. Annie had no difficulty reading Christian's eyes. He's beginning to wonder if Karl was right, Annie thought. The Portsmouthers were growing tense.

It occurred to Annie that they were going to do what they came for, and that she could die shortly. Ludicrous as it seemed to do so, she tried hard to remember what her last meal was. It was hard to remember; it certainly wasn't enjoyable. Hardtack, dried dingleberries, and water. Yes, that was it. She wished she'd had something more memorable if it was to be her last meal.

She noticed a strange sound. She pressed a hand against one auditory membrane. "I hear it again," she said. "A hum, like an animal speaking..."

"Grab that bug," Rictus said, pointing.

With a flick of his hand, Dietrich plucked the small, green insect out of the air.

"Th' bug's talkin'," Rictus said. "Somethin' about the city." Rictus put his face next to Dietrich's hand. "Talk, in there. Are you with the humans?"

"Oh, I always has a bad habit o' talkin' to m'self," said a small, buzzy voice. "I don' know nuthin'."

"You're not gettin' away with that," Rictus answered. He looked up. "Dietrich, open your hand a bit."

Dietrich did.

Rictus looked down on the little insect. "Listen, bug. We're here to stop the bones and get them out of here, do you understand? We're tryin' to help. We need to know what they're planning in the city, get it? What do you know?"

Ted looked up at him and shuffled. "Nuthin'."

"C'mon," Rictus said, his eyebrows connecting in a scowl, "I been 'round the block a few times. I know bugs, bug, and if there's anybody knows what's goin' on in this Valley, it's you. So let me put it to you this way--if you don't tell me their plans in the city, I'll rip your legs off one at a time."

A minute of silence followed.

"They sent me ta scout," said Ted meekly. "I was doin' that when I ran inta you folks. Is you from Boneville?"

"I am," Rictus said. "These humans are from Portsmouth, which is near Boneville. We're tryin' to stop the killing. Can you help us?"

"You's tryin' ta stop th' killin'? Well...I guess I can tell ya, then. Gran'ma's queen of Atheia now cuz poor Thorn is dead, an' Gran'ma's plannin' a charge out th' main gate."

"Vhat is it saying?" Serge asked.

Rictus held up a hand for silence.

"You complain I hog spyglass und now you hog insect."

"When's the charge?" Rictus asked.

"Ah, c'mon..." Ted complained.

"Bug, I could squish you flat." Rictus raised a hand to illustrate.

"Rictus, be nice," Annie admonished.

He glared. "We don't have time to be nice, Annie, or haven't you noticed?"

"Okay, okay!" Ted whined. "I ain't fit fer this sorta work. I'll tells ya, but I don' feels too good about it. Ain't never ratted on friends before, but they's plannin' ta charge as soon as I gets back and says there won't be no extra nasty surprises...such as th' likes o' you."

Rictus nodded. "You scout because they can't see off the wall. I get it." Rictus cupped a hand to Serge's ear and whispered into it. Serge nodded. Rictus turned back to Ted. "Okay, bug, we're gonna have to trust each other. I know that's tough, but we're here to stop the killin', got it? I need you to wait until our men are in position, and then go back and tell your queen that it's good for the charge. To show you I don't mean ta double-cross you, I'll tell you what we're gonna do. We're gonna move into the outer town down there while there's still no guards to watch us from th' walls, and then when they make that charge, we're gonna be there as the gate opens. We'll stop the charge but we won't shoot anybody, got it? And we'll have another team to surround the bones. If it all goes well, no shootin' and nobody gets hurt, see?"

"Sounds sorta risky and stupid," Ted said.

"If we take off with the bones in secret, your queen will figure it out and pursue. This way, we neutralize everybody. And here's the alternative, bug. This queen has underestimated the bones' firepower. If they charge outta that gate with swords and bows, they're gonna get slaughtered. You got that?"

"Well..."

"Now come with us while we move," Rictus said, "and then we'll give you the go-ahead back to the city." Rictus turned to Serge and scratched in the dirt with a stick. "Listen, Serge. Put your men in two groups. Put two Bonebreakers in one for the city, and three in the other for the bones. Get about two thirds of the submachine guns in the bone group, to make sure they're intimidated when our men come out of hiding. I'll be with the bone group, and I'll confront Phoney. It's best if you be in the other group and meet this queen. Got it? If necessary, we shoot the bones, but we try to avoid shooting any of the people in the city."

"Makes sense, Rictus."

"Sounds risky," Christian said.

"Hush," Dietrich said. "Serge knows vhat he is doing."

"Annie and Smiley can stay here with the kids," Rictus added.

"Just a minute," Annie interrupted, "I get to help out."

"Annie..." Rictus began.

"Oh, no," Annie said, stopping him. "I can shoot now, Rictus. I'll help you confront the bones."

"Annie..." Rictus said again.

Dietrich cleared his throat. "I am to stay vis Miss Bone, and I can be von of zuh Bonebreakers to confront zuh bones, ja? See vill be vis me." He jerked a head toward Smiley, who was further up the hill, surrounded by the other troops and his flock of children. "He vatched kids until ve arrive, surely he can do it for a little vile until ve ready to leave."

Rictus scowled. "Dietrich, you're being an enabler."

Annie smiled. "Thank you, Dietrich."

Dietrich shrugged.

"Ve vaste time," Serge said. "Let's move."

The men organized and began a stealthy stalk down the mountainside. It was slow going over the rocks, but they ensured that they were unseen. Sweat dripped off each of them. They were at the edge of the burned town, ready to move into position, when Annie looked back.

"Fone?" she said.

"Sssh," Rictus hissed.

"Fone Bone!" she shouted. She stood up and stared back at the mountain where a small, white figure was disappearing among the rocks.

Annie ran.

"Dammit," Rictus said through clenched teeth. "That woman!"

Dietrich looked at Serge.

Serge grunted. "Go, Dietrich. Give me your Bonebreaker, ja? Und zen ve haf enough firepower visout you."

Dietrich handed over the Bonebreaker and ran after Annie Bone.

88888

Fone Bone climbed to Sinner's Rock. A light wind blew across his skin. He gazed to the north and saw the Valley was green with summer. He knew it was the last time he would see it, and he was glad to see it like this.

Ishmael sat near the entrance to the cave. He was kneeling and his lips were moving.

"Are you praying?" Fone Bone asked.

Ishmael opened his eyes and looked up. "Of course, Father."

"To who?"

"To whoever will listen. I'm afraid my parents never catechized me."

Ishmael stood and arched his hunched back, trying, it seemed, to stand more like a man.

Fone Bone walked toward his son. "Around here, they pray to th' dragons, I think."

"Then they will listen if they are able and of a mind to," Ishmael said. "Have you said your own prayers, Father?"

Fone Bone shook his head. "Smiley was always th' religious one."

"A pity," Ishmael answered, and his face, tortured and deformed as it was, showed genuine compassion. "Religion gives a death like yours more meaning."

"You're going to kill me?" Bone asked.

"Aren't you here to kill me?" Ishmael asked in turn.

Bone gazed again at the Valley. So beautiful. It was much as he had seen it that first day in late fall, except now it was green and bright. So very green. So very peaceful.

It was a good place to die.

"I guess I am," Bone whispered. He clenched his eyes and felt tears press out. "I just want it all to stop."

Ishmael stood behind his father and he, too, gazed at the Valley. "Then I will defend myself, Father. This is just."

"Is it?" Bone asked. "Is any of this just? You kill people, and you act like you don't even care."

"I care," Ishmael said. "I care very much. I love you, and I love my mother. But I do what I was sent to do."

"To punish my broken promises? By killing bones and humans?"

Ishmael shook his head. "There are many sins to avenge." He waved a hand to the warring city. "There. Atheia. Ruled for countless generations by House Harvestar. The ancient queen, Ven, was a wise and virtuous ruler, gifted by the dragons, guardian of the Dreaming. But her line became polluted, and now it is cut off. Rose Harvestar bore a bastard child, and that child also committed wrongs, and she was justly slain, but then her own child did the same evil." He gestured to himself. "I am the fourth generation, born of Queen Rose's sin, so now Queen Rose will see the destruction of her house, for it is written, I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me."

"That's cute, Ishmael," Bone said. "You're real good at that. But I can quote th' Bible, too. How 'bout this one? Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die."

Ishmael smiled. "You think you've found a contradiction? You haven't. You see, that third and that fourth generation--they're sinners, too."

Fone Bone chuckled, still looking over the green trees. "You'll think this is funny. I'm illegitimate, like you. Phoney researched it in the courthouse and found out. He never told me, and he thinks I don't know. But I know."

"It is just," Ishmael repeated. "Three dynasties end here this day: Harvestar, Big Johnson Bone, and one other."

"One other?" Bone asked.

"It is none of your concern, Father."

Fone Bone turned to look at Ishmael. He looked for a long time. He could no longer pretend Ishmael was beautiful, and yet somehow, on some level, he was: he was Bone's own son, and Bone was glad, before the end, that he had held his offspring, if only for a moment. "And it absolutely has to be this way?" Bone asked.

"Of course, Father. It's Fate."

"Is there no free will? Can't we make our own destiny at all?"

Ishmael shook his head. "Your line is set to end, Father, and that is that. Can you see any way, now, that it could be preserved?"

"No," Bone admitted.

"Can you even imagine how your circumstances might change from this point?"

"No."

"That is Fate." Ishmael pointed to the towering pinnacle of Sinner's Rock, which jutted over the Valley at a dangerous angle. "One more thing to explain. Do you know how this place got its name?"

"I don't."

Ishmael walked to the pillar and rested his hand on the coarse sandstone. "It is formed by wind, of course. In the old days, the very, very old days, the Atheians took the worst criminals here--murderers, rapists, and the like--and tied them to this rock and cut their throats, leaving them to bleed so that the Valley would not become defiled by their misdeeds."

"It's always blood with you, isn't it?"

"Not always, but often, Father. The Atheians saw the shape of this stone as symbolic. I wouldn't expect you to understand it, but trust me on this. In the old tongue, it is called a lingam, and since it is a natural lingam, and a large one, they believed it was a powerful centerpoint of all existence. This is where they came to balance the Dreaming. Ven Harvestar performed her rites here. In time, the Veni-yan and the Harvestars forgot the ancient rituals, so the Dreaming grew unstable, and that allowed the Locust to rise near the surface. The forgetfulness of short-lived, lazy humans made his prison walls thin. It is ironic that I, the new Locust, will repair this oversight." He turned a grim but humorous eye on Fone Bone. "Such is the justice of the universe."

"How do we do this?" Bone asked.

"It is simple. I try to kill you and you try to kill me."

Fone Bone walked to the stone and placed his hands beside the long claws of his son. He pictured Ishmael's sharp teeth digging into his throat and sucking out the life. His middle felt hollow and his head felt light. He was afraid. He had never been afraid like this before because his destiny had never before felt so certain. Cold perspiration rolled from his head and his fingers trembled. His tongue darted across his teeth.

His teeth.

He remembered the night he kissed Thorn, and he remembered the numbness in his mouth that spread from his incisor. The Crown of Horns--Ishmael had said in his dream that it was destroyed, but two shards remained.

Fone Bone had one of them.

The Crown of Horns was the opposite of the Locust. Was a fragment enough?

Fone Bone turned to Ishmael. He felt his cheeks run wet. "Before..." he whispered, "before we do this...let me...let me just kiss my son. Just...once."

Treachery. But he knew it was right--or at least poetic--that it should end like this.

Ishmael smiled another compassionate smile and, tears streaming from his own eyes, opened his arms. "Come, my father," he whispered, "and break your oath to me."

Does he know? Bone wondered, but he moved into Ishmael's embrace. Ishmael lowered his bald head, and Bone kissed it.

My son.

Bone bit down hard.

Ishmael reeled backwards, roaring. Bone felt the tooth dissolve in his mouth. Ishmael clutched at Fone Bone and dug his long claws into his back. They cut deep, very deep, too deep. It was like getting hit in the back with a sledgehammer, but the initial shock kept coming and wouldn't fade. Bone's blood, thick like ink, splashed onto the base of Sinner's Rock and sank into the dry, porous, and thirsty stone.

Ishmael pulled Bone into the air, and then Bone could feel himself falling. His head struck the base of the rock, and his arms spread out to either side. The pain in his back went from sharp to numb, and his vision swam with shadows. He saw his son. The top half of Ishmael's head was gone, and in its place was a black, smoking hole.

Ishmael rocked on his feet. "Father..."

He tumbled forward and his ruined head fell across Fone Bone's lap. Fone Bone could hardly move, and his vision darkened, but he tilted his head to the sky and moaned before his energy faded, "Ishmael, my son, my son! Ishmael, my son!"

88888

Annie and Dietrich reached the top of the rocky eminence.

"Fone Bone!" Annie cried. She ran to Bone's side and sank to the ground, scraping her knees. She hardly noticed the gargantuan beast lying across Bone's lap.

"So much blood!" she said. "Dietrich, give me a kit! Give me..."

Fone Bone opened his eyes. His weak expression grew curious. "...Annie?" he asked. "Annie...Bone?"

"Fone Bone." Annie cradled his head. Her tears dripped onto her glasses, so she took them off.

"...Annie," Bone whispered, "...I'm sorry."

"Don't be," she whispered back.

"...I read your book."

She smiled, and even though she was crying, she almost laughed. Books? Now? "You did?"

His nod was feeble. "I didn't finish, though. Please tell me how it ends."

Annie bit her lip. She could see he was fading. "Well, Arthur and his son have a fight for the kingdom. Arthur kills his son, but he's terribly wounded and is going to die."

"...Yes...?"

"And so fairies come," Annie whispered. "They are beautiful ladies, and they come in a lovely boat that barely touches the water. They weep over Arthur's wounds, and they take him into the boat and into their arms, and they carry him away to Avalon."

Fone Bone reached with one hand and stroked a lock of Annie's long, auburn hair. A faint smile appeared on his mouth. "Yes," he said, "yes, that seems about right."

His hand dropped and the life began to leave his eyes. On impulse, Annie bent her head down and brushed his lips with her own. When she lifted her head, she saw an expression of wonder that slowly faded as his breathing ceased.

Annie's tears washed the spattered blood from his face.

After a long time, she stood. She touched her lips and looked shyly at the ground. She couldn't believe what she had just done. She felt guilt for having done it, and shame for having done it in front of Dietrich. She pulled her windbreaker close about her because the wind was coming up cold. She looked up at Dietrich as the breeze blew her hair around her face, but she saw no judgment in his eyes.

She tried to clear her throat, found it clogged, and realized she was still crying. "Dietrich?" she asked.

"Yes, Miss Annie?"

"Do you, um, do you Charioteers or whatever you are, do you pray for the dead?"

"Yes, Miss Annie."

"Would you, please?"

He took the beads from his pocket, kissed them, knelt beside Fone Bone, and recited. Annie stood by and listened. She didn't understand all the words, but they were beautiful and they soothed her.

His chant floated past her aural membranes as she stared out across the Valley. The treetops waved in the breeze like a dark sea. So green, so very green, so full of life.

88888

Atheia opened. Armed with swords and arrows, Gran'ma, Tom, Thintook, Astynax, and several Veni-yan stood poised as the gates swung in.

About to charge, they stopped at the sight of several armed humans pointing weapons like those the bones carried.

"Halt!" a large, bald man shouted. "Stop right zer, please. Drop your veapons."

Gran'ma and the soldiers paused. Gran'ma turned a glaring eye to look for Ted, but Ted was nowhere in sight. "Who are you?" Gran'ma demanded.

Serge chambered the first bullet of the Bonebreaker. "I am Serge of Porstmous, und zis is my mess-you-up machine. Ve haf charge of zees bones, und ve vill be taking zem back vis us now."

"Just a minute." Gran'ma stomped forward, put her fists to her hips, and looked Serge over. "They've made war on my city. They've killed the queen. They've killed my only granddaughter."

"Go back where you came from," Thintook shouted. "This doesn't concern you."

"It concerns us," Tom added.

"It concerns us all," Serge answered. "I vant no more killing." He patted the gun. "But I kill you all in a moment if I must, ja? Do not make zat necessary."

Behind Serge, Christian, Rictus, and the other men surrounded the bones. The bones stood in place, dumbfounded, staring at their weapons stupidly or with horror. Without the influence of the Lord of the Locusts, they no longer understood why they had come to this Valley to kill, and disorientation mixed with guilt settled over them like a large cloak. Only Floyd and T. Bone, the really fervent murderers, remembered their purpose. T. Bone, ever the opportunist, knew when it was time to quit.

Floyd Bone, however--

"Rictus!" Floyd shouted. He bared his teeth, pulled an arrow from his back, and put it to the string. Before he could pull it, Rictus drew his pistol and fired from the hip. The bullet snapped the string in half with a crack, and the broken ends whipped across Floyd's shoulder, making a deep line of blood. The bullet entered Floyd's face, smashing through his teeth and traveling upward through the base of his brain. Floyd's thin face contracted, and he swayed on his feet before tumbling to the ground.

The other bones didn't run, didn't panic. A few flinched. A few covered their mouths. T. Bone, standing next to Floyd's carcass, merely sucked his cigarette, kept his eyes straight ahead, and fought the little smile that threatened to take over his mouth. Funny Bone, bruised black from head to foot, cried.

Rictus walked up and looked at the body. "Wasn't much of a barber, anyway." He chewed the inside of his cheek and looked around at his fellow citizens. "Now, let's see...ah." His eyes settled on Phoney Bone.

Phoney swallowed. Rictus walked toward him.

Smiley ran in and pushed his way past Christian. He ran between Phoney and Rictus.

"Smiley, shouldn't you be watchin' the kids?" Rictus demanded.

"They're safe," Smiley promised. "Dolly's real mature and she'll watch th' others. I wanted to keep my eye on you, Rictus, in case you tried anything like this. I won't let you hurt my cousin."

Rictus clenched his teeth. "Smiley Bone, your cousin made this trouble."

"Yes, Rictus, but--"

Rictus sighed. "Yeah, I know. Your own flesh and bone, is that it?"

Smiley nodded.

"Let me tell you somethin', Smiley. I'm through with Boneville. I lied, I stole, and you won't have to deal with me again." He pointed a finger at Phoney. "But before I go for good, I'm gettin' rid of that menace. He's through with Boneville, too, and so are you, if you try to stop me." Rictus stepped forward. Smiley crossed his arms, stood at his full height, and blocked his path.

"Smiley..." Rictus said.

"Do it," Smiley answered. "Just do it."

Rictus raised his fists.

The Portsmouthers and bones watched. There were no cheers, no shouts, no jeers or encouragements. It was more like a solemn rite, perhaps a funeral.

Rictus sized up his opponent. Rictus was big for a bone, and back in the day, he had been tough, but Smiley was twice his height. What's more, Smiley was young, lean, and fast. Though he was normally friendly, more than a few bones were awed by, or even afraid of, his prodigious strength. Rictus figured he had one advantage over this giant: he knew hand-to-hand combat, though it had been years since he'd used it, and Smiley was no fighter.

Smiley raised his fists in imitation of Rictus's stance, and they circled each other.

Smiley came in swinging. Rictus took a jarring blow to his wrist as he blocked one punch, and he received a glancing rake across his jaw. Seeing a few stars, he nonetheless took advantage of his height and gave Smiley two quick jabs to the stomach before they broke off and circled each other again.

Rictus was already feeling his wind. Sweat rolled from his face, and his heart thumped hard. I'm too old, he thought. He used to go round after round in the ring, pummeling his opponents. Had that really been him? How long ago was that?

This time, Rictus made the first move. Smiley sidestepped his swing and planted an uppercut square on Rictus's lower face. Rictus felt his teeth rattle and he stumbled, giving Smiley opportunity to plant an elbow squarely between Rictus's shoulders. Rictus fell facedown in the dirt. He pressed a tongue against his flat teeth and found a few were loose.

Smiley let him get up.

Enough boxing, Rictus thought. Time for some dirty fighting. Rictus came in again and, as he anticipated, Smiley sidestepped it. Rictus raised a foot and slammed it down into Smiley's knee.

Smiley's knee distended, but the joint didn't break. Smiley fell to that knee and Rictus laid a swinging punch across his mouth. Smiley returned it before scrambling backwards.

They wiped blood from their mouths and gazed at each other.

"Rictus..." Smiley said.

"Bring it," Rictus answered.

Smiley brought it. They both swung as fast and as hard as they could. Rictus kept his arms up and found he could anticipate most of Smiley's moves, though he had to be quick. Smiley, on the other hand, was forgetting to block.

Smiley lashed out, putting his shoulder into it. Rictus ducked the punch and gave Smiley a solid smack in the armpit. Smiley bent to the side and Rictus swung around him, put him in a half nelson, and grabbed one of Smiley's eyebrows. Smiley's body weakened with the searing pain. With his hand stiff, Rictus chopped Smiley's long nose and broke it. The end purpled and swelled, and the porous olfactory membrane underneath dripped long stringers of blood.

Through it all, Smiley didn't even whimper.

Wheezing from the strain, Rictus punched Smiley several times in the face. Smiley struggled, but Rictus used his greater weight to hold firm. He kept punching, and he didn't stop until Smiley went limp. Then Rictus dropped him, cracked his knuckles, and looked up.

"Now." Rictus's breathing was violent. "Phoney."

Phoney moved to run, but Rictus grabbed him, punched him a few times, and then hauled him by the collar of his shirt. He took hold of the back of Smiley's vest with his other hand and dragged them both to the gate of Atheia. He walked past Serge's men and dropped the unconscious cousins. "There," he said. "There's the trouble-makers. Phoney Bone and his partner in crime. They're yours, Your Highness, or whatever you are. Do with 'em what you like. The rest of the bones are goin' home." He glanced at Serge. "Let's not stand around and argue, Serge. Let's get out of here. The show's over."

The Portsmouthers rounded up the bones into a circle, disarmed them, and trained their guns on them. It would be a forced march back to Boneville. As the humans rode, the bones would walk and endure their shame. Rictus rode with Serge. An outcast, he would remain an outcast. He would go to the city of the humans where he would live out his last years and die. Their people were his people now.

88888

Dietrich held Annie's hand as they walked down into the Valley and joined their victorious companions. Dietrich mounted his camel and looked at his friend. "Vill you ride vis me, Miss Annie?" he asked.

Annie wiped her glasses and put them on her face. She smiled at him, but her smile strained and then faded. She thought about Fone Bone, and about what she'd done. She looked at the carnage before the city gate. She looked at the bones, standing there with their heads hung in remorse, confusion, and exhaustion.

She looked at Dietrich. She hoped she would see him again when it was over, but she knew she wouldn't. She could acknowledge now what she felt for him, could acknowledge that he was the fulfillment of her childhood fantasies, but she could also turn away, and somewhere in the back of her mind, a voice that wasn't hers said, Your will is free. The voice sounded like Fone Bone's.

She shook her head, hesitantly at first, but then firmly. "Thank you, Dietrich. Really. But no. I'd like to, but no." She breathed. "I am a bone, Dietrich, and my place is with my people."

Annie walked into the midst of the bones. She touched heads and shoulders and offered smiles. They were spent, and she tried to give them what strength she had. She would endure their punishment, and she would share their shame. They were wicked and foolish, true, but who wasn't?

She spared one last glance at Dietrich on his camel, who looked more than ever like Galahad on a charger, and she said to herself, "It's time to grow up."

88888

Pushy Veni-yan soldiers led Phoney Bone in irons. They dragged him into the gardened courtyard of Tarsil's Tower. There in the middle of the green lawn sat Gran'ma Ben on an oaken throne. She wore a long red robe woven with gold embroidery, and she leaned on one fist. The deep scowl of a monarch rested on her brow in place of a crown.

Thintook came in behind Phoney and gave him a kick that sent him sprawling onto his face.

Phoney raised his head, looked at Gran'ma, and swallowed.

"Well?" Gran'ma asked.

Phoney swallowed again. He worked his tongue around his mouth until he found his voice. "Gran'ma, I..."

He received another boot to the back of the head and his nose rammed into the grass.

"You'll address Queen Rose as Your Highness," Thintook said.

Phoney looked up again. "Your Highness..." And that was all he could think to say.

Gran'ma shifted her weight and sat upright. "You killed my granddaughter, Phoney Bone, and many of my people are dead because of you. I am old; I will have no more children. You have brought an end to my house."

She reached behind her throne, clutched something, and threw it in front of Phoney.

"So I will make an end of yours," Gran'ma said.

"No!" Phoney screamed. "Smiley!" He stared in unbelieving guilt and horror at the severed head of his cousin lying in the grass, its coagulated blood staining black the stump of its neck.

Phoney tore the grass with his fingers and beat his own face with his palms, but then Thintook yanked him off the ground. Phoney looked into the man's bearded face. "Here," Thintook said, "let me do that for you," and then Phoney saw only a fist, and then he saw only darkness.

88888

He came to in a dungeon cell. He was still in irons, but now they were connected to the wall. He opened his eyes and groaned. The chains clanked coldly.

The light in the cell was a dead white, drizzling in through the high, barred window. The light was empty of heat and empty of color save a tint of deathly blue. A shadow fell across the window and blocked some of that chill light, and Phoney raised his throbbing head.

Gran'ma peered in. "You'll rot in there, Phoney, if you like," she said, "but I rather expect you wouldn't like, so I'll give you another option."

Something flashed as Gran'ma tossed it into the cell, and it fell with a loud ring in front of Phoney's face. He saw with dismay that it was the great knife Piecemaker.

"Live with yourself, Phoney Bone," Gran'ma said, "or don't." Her face withdrew from the window and the ugly light returned.

Phoney stared at the knife. The light reflected from its glinting blade, and in the middle of that unearthly shine was the black reflection of Phoney's own left eye. It looked like a dark pit yawning to swallow the room. As night drew on and the cold light faded, the pit grew and filled the dungeon with a heavy dreariness, and still Phoney didn't move or even blink as the blade changed from white to blue to an engulfing black. The chains scraped against the stone floor as Phoney moved his right hand to touch his wrist and feel the vein throbbing with the steady thud of his heart. He lay there through the night, keeping a grisly vigil, as he stared into the darkness at the place where the knife lay. His end was clear and there was no changing it. "Phoney Bone makes his own destiny." He had said that once. He couldn't remember when. It seemed so long ago. He had said that, and it was true. He had rolled his own dice and made his own mistakes, and now they were consummated in this moment. There was one mistake left to make. It wouldn't be nice, or fun, but he could at least delude himself that it had a certain poetic finality. And he had no doubt that, when that action was complete, a pit as black as the one he had seen in the blade awaited him on the other side.

That last thought brought a grim smile to his face. Smiley would have thought it ironic, to be sure. It took despair, chief of sins, to bring religion to Phoncible P. Bone.

88888

After the war comes the real grisly part: the cleanup. The bones, and Thorn, had left destruction in their wake, and people moved out of the city with shovels to bury the dead, beginning with the slaughtered bones in front of the wall. The two rat creatures watched as the men marched past on their ugly errand.

"All that meat wasted," the purple one said.

"It could go real well in a quiche," the brown one commented.

"You know," the purple one said, scratching his fur, "there's no particular reason they have to bury all those moist, succulent, marbled-with-fat bones when we could make cleanup easier."

"That's a good point, Comrade," the brown one said. "Let's see if they need our services."

"Let's."

The rats shook hands on it and then walked together out of the gate to do their duty for the city of Atheia.

Meanwhile, Wendell and Rory stood at Sinner's Rock, shovels in their hands. They looked down at the bodies of Fone Bone and Ishmael. Wendell felt numb, but his mind held at least enough curiosity to note with some interest that bones' eyes turned into little Xs when they died.

"Stars, what a mess," Rory said.

"Yeah," Wendell agreed.

Rory bent over Fone Bone. "Prime Minister Bone. Huh. Guess we best bury 'im." He reached out a hand and touched Fone Bone's head. "Say..."

"What is it, Rory?" Wendell asked.

"This skin. You ever felt this stuff? Pretty weird."

"Yeah, well, bones are weird. Let's get to it."

"Well, wait a minute, Wendell. I say weird, I don' mean bad. I mean, should we let this go to waste? This is fine skin. Back's all tore up, I see, but I bet you could get a hat or somethin' out of 'im."

Wendell furrowed his forehead. "You wanna make a hat out of Fone Bone?"

"Why not?"

Wendell leaned on the shovel and looked north. After Bone saved the Valley, the idea would have disgusted him. Now that felt like ages ago, and he wasn't sure if anything would ever evoke strong emotion from him again. He shrugged. "Yeah. Why not?"

Rory drew a knife.

88888

Back to Boneville. The trip had been long, and now the adventure was over. The other bones slinked away, off to live with themselves in whatever way they could. In all probability, only T. Bone felt no remorse. Annie, legs sore and cramped from the long walk, hobbled down the narrow street to the brownstone where she had her flat. She knew the bills had piled up, the dust bunnies had regrouped under the furniture, and she wasn't sure, but there might even be some month-old dirty dishes growing fungus in the sink.

She looked up at the low, rundown tenement and sighed, "Back to the daily grind."

As she stared at the building, she caught a flicker of white against the blue sky, as if something had moved on the roof.

She went to the side of the building and climbed the fire escape. It creaked under her feet and the rail got brown rust on her palms. With each step, her heart beat a little faster. At last, she came to the rooftop. Her hair, still loose, blew in the gentle summer breeze and her pale skin baked under the high sun.

He was there, standing in the middle of the roof, feathers gleaming white and quivering in the breeze, as spectacular as she always knew he would be.

The Stork.

The Stork gazed at her with wise, liquid eyes of bright sky-blue. In his long and regal beak, he held a dangling bundle as white as his feathers.

Annie pointed to herself with a questioning expression.

The Stork gave a single nod.

Trembling, Annie walked onto the roof. Her knees shook. Her breath came fast. When she reached him, she genuflected as she had been taught and held out her hands to receive the gift. The Stork, towering over her, lifted his head and set the bundle in her open arms.

A small, doe-eyed bone boy gazed at her. He cooed, and a tiny little mouth appeared under his mound-like nose.

Annie smiled. "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh," she recited. Then she looked into the Stork's eyes. "He looks like his father."

The Stork gave Annie a small wink, turned, spread wide his wings, and took off into the air, wheeling high overhead and swooping toward the gleaming Big Bum-Smack Mountains, back to wherever he went when not delivering infants.

Annie looked down into the bundle again and her grin widened. The baby giggled. Well, Annie thought, things would certainly have to change around here if there was to be a baby. The apartment needed cleaned, and Annie needed to go shopping, and she'd better call her mother, though she could put that off. Oh dear, what would Mother think--darling little Annie with a baby and not even married?

Of course everyone would know who the father was. When Annie saw that the baby was a boy, he was Fone, Junior, and that settled that.

She walked back to the fire escape, rocking the baby in her arms.

And the universe tilted just a little off center.

_Epilogue_

Taneal's prophecies had stopped at the death of the new Locust and she had regained her health. Now, dressed in a long white robe, her hair scrupulously covered by a veil, Taneal moved through the sanctuary.

It had been her life's dream and it was now complete. She had saved the offerings to her shrines until at last she was able to renovate and consecrate the Temple of the Dragons that Tarsil had desecrated.

Tarsil had been afraid to destroy the building itself. It was ancient, hewn of enormous blocks of stone, and legend had it the dragons themselves had built it. Tarsil had hauled out the reliefs and statues and broken them in the streets. He had smashed the ancient altar, and he had bricked up the catacombs. The building he left desolate but standing, and he had not carried out his threat to strew the bones of the catacombs' hallowed dead on the sacred threshold.

Adrian was a grown man now. He had a wife, seven children, and a good job in the Merchant Guild. Taneal smiled. She was happy for him, though such pleasures could never be her own. She was high priestess of the temple, and she had dedicated herself to the dragons.

Taneal had decorated the restored temple with her own artwork. Dragons of all shapes and sizes adorned the sanctuary. The Great Red Dragon hovered in relief like a vigilant guardian over the entrance. Vangar of the dry wastes lay stretched out under the northern windows, and Balsaad of the rivers lay entwined under the southern arch. Twisting above the new blood altar was a sculpture that had required three years and a team of workmen: it was Mim, the queen, and at the statue's base was a tiny wheel of locusts, memory of Mim's madness.

In the temple's columned portico stood a series of reliefs depicting the Harvestars who one after another had guarded the Dreaming alongside the dragons until their line ended. Many worshippers and pilgrims stopped at these carvings on their way into the sanctuary and ran their hands over the depictions. There was Ven, the first of the Harvestars and the wisest. There was Queen Hyacinth, the bravest. Many other queens stood on the walls as well, of lesser or greater note, until the line came to Queen Rose the Warrior, standing regally with a gigantic attack-sword in hand and a bloodied rat creature at her feet. After her stood Queen Lunaria the Kind, who in the sculpture tended vines as a sign of her peacefulness and love of nature. After her stood another sculpture, different from the others. Its rendering was fuller and the features of its face were more exact, as if known to the sculptor. In this queen's arms was a small creature with a melon-like nose and bulbous feet. The queen's face tilted toward him as if they were about to kiss.

"Who is this?" a pilgrim might ask the high priestess.

Taneal would smile and turn to the enquirer as she ran her own fingers over the stone. "They were our saviors," she would say, "but they unmade their work with their own hands and by their forbidden love brought ruin on the House of Harvestar. This is Queen Thorn, the last of the Harvestars."

"And in her arms?"

"That is her consort," Taneal would reply. "He is the Fone Bone. A kind soul. A brave soul. He should have been known as Fone Bone Locust-slayer, but after his victory, he chose an ignoble path. In history now, and in the future when history turns to myth, he will be known as Fone Bone the Deceiver, Fone Bone the Infanticide...

"...and Fone Bone the Oathbreaker."

**Finis**

_De mortuis nil nisi bonum._


End file.
